


The Felix Burton Story Book 4:  A Wareater’s Grief

by DreoganDragon



Series: The Felix Burton Story [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter RPF, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 13:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 69,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30039474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreoganDragon/pseuds/DreoganDragon
Summary: Nothing good ever comes without a price and it never lasts, Felix thought it could be different, but now grief stricken, he starts his fourth year of Hogwarts.  Taking the opportunity to spread some distance between him and memories, he takes up the exchange program's open slot to Greece.  The shores of Ithake beacon him to explore, to grieve, to discover ancient secrets and find his lost flame.
Series: The Felix Burton Story [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1244681





	1. Chapter 1: Wake

Heavy, large drops of water fell upon the soil and gravestones, their familiar sound heard on the church’s ceramic tiled roof. Voluminous, black clouds hid the sun behind their bulk, casting dark shadows on the gathering of people beneath them. 

Felix sat in a pew in the front, between the two rows of arched columns on either side, leading to the altar, his face hanging low in voiceless despair. Outside a thunder tore the sky in a bright blue flash.

Helen sat to his left, giving him a kiss on his forehead, tears streaking down her cheeks, the mascara dragged down creating an otherworldly effect on her visage.

Peter sat next to her with Alfred and William sitting next to him. Peter had no more tears to give, his face a mask of well-polished rage mixed with a profound sense of loss.

William and Alfred sobbed quietly, looking at the coffin in front of them, on the center of aisle, between them and the altar.

People started entering the Anglican church, as rain fell from above without end.

Hope sat on Felix’s other side, taking his right hand in hers, void of life-will and surrendered.

When the pews were full and there were no more people to enter the priest begun the service.

As if on cue, the electricity failed, sinking the church to shadowed darkness. Only candles in chandeliers lit the interior, hanging from the ceiling, and the flashes of thunders from the outside.

After twenty or so minutes of the priest and hymnists chanting and singing hymns there came the time for the speeches. First of all, Peter rose and walked up the three steps to the podium on the altar’s left, then Alfred and William spoke, then it was his turn.

After a moment’s hesitation Felix rose to his feet, fists on his sides and walked up to the podium, passing in front of the well-crafted wooden coffin, its lid open, its inhabitant covered in white sand lilies, revealing only the face, with the eyes closed. He looked ahead at nothing and no one, tearless. “Charles…he was my first friend, my best friend, cousin and brother I wish I had. He was kind and cheerful to me even if at first I was rude to him, locked in my cage of childhood abuse, and yet through his unrelenting mirth managed to break through and release me to a world of laughter and compassion, even before we learned we were cousins. His loyalty for those he loved and cared about never wavered, never frayed…when all others feared and hated…my family he just smiled, when others would behave badly he’d comfort and support. Now, the light’s gone and the beacon’s out, hope’s gone.” Felix drew a breath dawdling for a moment, for what followed. “He sacrificed himself, took the…bullet for me and I don’t know how to ever repay that. I miss you Charles Blake…” Felix finished in an emotionless voice and stood for a moment before walking back to his pew.

A sermon later, Peter, Felix and the two grandfathers rose to their feet, Felix stood in the front of the coffin’s left side with Peter on the right, the two older men taking the rear. Peter closed the lid with great pained care.

Felix closed his right hand around the brass handle and lifted, as did the other three, on their shoulders and started walking slowly under silence breaking only by the sound of rain and thunder.

They walked to the dug grave, outside in the heart of the cemetery, under the heavy rainfall.

They set the coffin next to the grave, where it’d be lowered to its final residence.

Peter took the umbrella from Alfred, passing a hand around Helen’s shoulders.

Felix stepped under Hope’s umbrella, ignoring her hand on the back of his neck as well as the Priest finishing the liturgy. The coffin was then lowered into the grave and in a queue those gathered threw a rose or some soil above it, before departing for the Blakes’ house where the wake would take place.

“Go, I’ll catch up.” Felix told his mother, staying behind under the pouring rain, eyes fixed on the open hole on the ground.

He waited until he was left alone on the grave, the Celtic cross lying back against a cypress tree, the eternal tree on the center of the cross, branches bending around creating a circle with the roots with an angel wing on either side of it.

Felix kneeled down in front of the grave, wiping the rain from his face, up and above his forehead and wet hair clumping together in tufts.

“I miss you so much already. It is not fair, why did she have to…I feel so devastated and adrift…I don’t know what to do, implode or explode…I just want to lie down and do nothing. Eleven years of Azrail and Ernaline torturing me, I can only remember four of them and yet I have never before felt as…lifeless, emotionless, and void as I do now. I didn’t even get a chance to tell you goodbye, or just how much your friendship, your existence meant to me…how could have I known? I want to cry I’ve wanted to for…since…but I just can’t…” He touched the muddy dark brown soil.

He stood there for a few moments, eyes closed before standing up and walking back to the Blakes’ home.

He entered through the kitchen entrance casting a spell to dry himself up, before entering the living room where he set about helping Helen and Hope with the needs of the wake’s visitors, a smiling façade plastered over his face as he talked and mingled.

“Tell me, Claudia Russo,” Professor Jordan asked her, holding a glass of red wine on one hand, his non-gloved hand, wearing a black suit and tie. His silver hair caught up on a bun with his deep amber eyes looking intensely at her. “What do you see when you look at him, now?” Claudia, seated in one of the armchairs, turned her head from talking to William and Emerick to see him, confused by his question.

“I – I don’t know, sir. Sorrow and grief? Fear and depression?” She guessed with a shoulder shrug. William looked between the man and his cousin, trying to understand what Ives Jordan saw that he could not.

“Sorrow and grief are normal under the circumstances. But I see no depression, who do you think he fears?” Professor Jordan gazed at the boy at the other end of the living room.

“Azrail and Ernaline?” Claudia asked in reply.

Professor Jordan gave a small pause, taking a seep from his glass. “When I first saw him, nigh four years ago he was indeed afraid of his siblings and father. Now, I will have to disagree with you. He does not know yet, he does not realize yet, or he won’t admit it to himself as of yet, but he fears Azrail and Ernaline no more.”

“Who then do you think he fears?” Claudia asked interested.

Felix continued helping his mother and aunt serve people with brandy and mince pies until the last of them left, before hugging his friends goodbye and returning to his place, he and his mum were renting down the road.

“I’m going to my room”, he told his mother, climbed the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him and pointing his wand at himself transformed into his snow leopard. He walked into one of the corners of the room, far away from the window, far away from the light, curled up and stayed there.

For the rest of the summer he avoided going out much and preferred to stay in his room in his snow leopard form, dulling the pain he was feeling, curled in the corner, although he had been very careful of his mother not to see him like that and keeping the shutters mostly closed as well. Two days after the funeral the Blakes moved out, to a new location under the protection of the Fidelius charm so that Azrail and his gang would not be able to find them. Hope had refused to relocate as well, at least for the summer.

At first Felix had declined to write back to his friends’ letters but towards summer’s end he had written a few sentences to Claudia and Emerick. Caladrius had been unable to find the Blakes, returning back with the letters still attached to his claws, until Felix had given up.

Felix did see the Blakes again in platform nine and three quarters, in King’s Cross station in London.

Peter shook his hand with Helen giving him a hug and a kiss on his forehead. Alfred boarded the train without so much as a word as William who was not to start Hogwarts for another year hugged him.

“Hey Will! I missed you all very much.” He told the younger boy, forcing a smile.

“Hey cuz, I missed you as well…I miss Cha-cha so much…”, William sniffed.

“I miss him too, William, I miss him too…you know you can write to me about anything whenever, yeah?” William gave a nod with his head.

“Ya, we’re moving again, something about the Fid…” Felix cut him off.

“Yeah, I know. You know you are not to talk about this with anyone else other than your parents right? Letters to me or Alfred about it could be…”

“Intercepted, yeah I know. Professor Horsewood talked to us about it.” His youngest cousin affirmed with a further nod.

“Will, love. I need to talk to Felix for a moment before he boards the train.” Hope gave William’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Sure, aunty Hope.” The boy went back to his parents.

“I’ll miss you terribly, are you sure about this?” Felix gave a sharp nod. She kissed his cheek, giving him a tight hug.

He boarded the train and sat in the same compartment with Emerick, Claudia, Angel and Ethel but remained largely silent throughout the train ride to Hogwarts. After the short ride in the carriages pulled by the Thestrals they entered the castle, as always it was night outside.

Wearing their school robes, they entered the Great Hall, taking their seats in their House tables with the Great Hall’s ceiling enchanted to reflect the sky and the candles floating about above their heads. Felix sat in Hufflepuff table, threading his fingers together with his hands on the table, in front of his chest.

After everyone had sat, Professor Horsewood, new Headmistress of Hogwarts gave a nod to a very tall, bulky, middle-aged man with a bald head and a thick, long, red moustache covering his otherwise clean-shaved face and extruding low cheekbones, the man’s hazel eyes showed no sign of compassion.

He walked slowly and with purpose, looking ahead, to the Great Hall’s doors and opened them. With a nod he greeted not Professor Jordan as Felix had expected, as had happened the previous three years, but a burly woman with ebony complexion, a large circumference and bosom under shaded-green robes, and gentle, blue eyes. The two men walked to the center of the room, where the ebony-skinned man continued walking to the Professors’ table taking a seat next to Professor Jordan who had also just taken his seat, entering the Great Hall from a smaller door from behind the table.

Professor Horsewood stood up, walking to the podium on the center, in front of the large table, gripping it with both hands.

“Now, before we start our Sorting ceremony and the feast after, a few words. I would like you, all, to welcome Mr. Michael Hudson who is going to take up the duties of Head of Slytherin House, Professor of Transfiguration and Deputy Headmaster of this School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would not willingly or knowingly test his tolerance for rule or law-breaking”, Felix did not fail to notice the well-hidden displeasure in her voice.

“Next, Professor Morgana Marvey will be taking up the duties of Professor of Potions, or Potions Master of Hogwarts…”, Professor Horsewood motioned to a woman on her right, who stood up for a moment taking a curtsey bow and sitting back down. Felix judged her to be around one meter sixty centimeters tall, no heavier than forty kilos and with a mane of lush, shining black hair running down her back to her ankles. She wore jeans and a black lace blouse beneath her Professors’ robes. Heavy black makeup adorned her green eyes and red lips. He made her to be in her early thirties. “…as Professor Turney…retired at the end of the year past”, Professor Horsewood took a small pause.

“Professor Eric Stephenson will be taking over Professor Rawthorn’s charms classes and Head of Ravenclaw, as Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts can’t take sides”, she pointed to a seat next of Professor Jordan to a young-looking man of average height and weight and short crimson hair, pale complexion and slanted brown eyes.

“I would like you to welcome Mr. Alexander North, who is going to take up the Caretaker’s duties from Professor Jordan”, she pointed to a man leaning against the wall, near the Great Hall’s entrance. He had the appearance of someone who has gone through life. Felix guessed him to be in his sixties, with white hair reaching his shoulders, and piercing gray eyes and a white-bronze complexion.

Students clasped their hands at each new face Headmistress Horsewood introduced.

“Finally, with the new faculty that is, Mrs. Olivia Alison will take up the Groundskeeper and Keeper of Keys of Hogwarts, also from Professor Jordan and Professor Willows.

“Now, last year two factions decided to wreak havoc and death in Hogwarts, all in the name of their beliefs. They were stopped and punished extensively. No such behaviour will be tolerated within these halls, so, any student caught bearing, holding or in possession of such a badge or caught spreading such ideologies will be expelled. As always dueling in Hogwarts is only permitted in the dueling tournament and only students participating in the tournament, with a notice of allowance from Professor Jordan, can practice dueling spells and the likes out of class, in the training grounds, when no other student or any of the Quidditch teams are practicing. For scheduling please make arrangements with Professors Jordan and Willows.

“Before we move on to the Sorting Ceremony, as of this year Hogwarts will partake in a student exchange scheme with three other international and well renowned Schools of Witchcraft and Wizardry so as to increase international cooperation and strengthen ties in an age of war and suffering. For further information on the matter Professor Willows can be found from tomorrow in his office in the south-west tower, across from the viaduct. Now, without any further ado, let the Sorting Ceremony begin!” Professor Horsewood sat down in her Headmistress’ armchair as Professor Hudson begun calling out names of the new First-year students.

Alfred was sorted into Gryffindor looking both pleased with himself and somewhat disappointed.

Once all of the First-years were sorted into their houses and the Sorting Hat had sang its song, the tables filled with food.

After everyone had eaten their fill, Felix in silence, Professor Horsewood gave a nod to the Head boy and Head girl, a Ravenclaw boy and a Gryffindor girl and they with the Prefects started emptying the students from the Great Hall and to their House’s dorms.

Felix exited the Great Hall fast and skipped breakfast the next day. Claudia and Emerick saw him in the school year’s first lesson, Potions.

He entered the dungeons’ gloomy, green-lit classroom and took a seat next to his friends.

“Welcome, welcome to the Potions class.” Professor Marvey stood in front of a blackboard, a new addition to the classroom, her long hair caught on a rather large ponytail and twisted around cylindrically behind her head pointing downwards with four spike-like items keeping it in place. “We will start the year with the Girding Potion, it’ll increase your endurance for a few weeks, but take more than two phials of it in a year and you will encounter some rather…unhealthy results. It also has a rather pungent and disgusting odour to it so it kind of balances out the increased stamina if you ask me. But enough of that, in my class there won’t be any mounts of notes and homework, I detest the stuff, I prefer hands-on practical experience. So, copy the potion’s recipe from the blackboard, and get kicking, in this class you’ll learn from trial and…many errors”, she told them moving out from in front of the blackboard.

“She’s cool…for a Slytherin”, Emerick whispered to Claudia and Felix.

“You are not so bad yourself, for a Ravenclaw that is, Mr.…?” Morgana replied with a mischievous voice.

“Uh...Emerick Stalwart, ma’am”, Emerick blushed.

“No, no ma’ams here. It’s Professor Morgana, Professor Marvey, or Professor. Ma’am will earn you nothing but grief”, she started making her rounds as the Fourth-year students begun with their girding potion.

Mid-way through the recipe she passed over Felix’s cauldron, with its shimmering blueish-silvery contents.

“I see some skill in potion-making, what’s your name?” She asked him, taking a whiff from his cauldron.

“Felix Burton, Professor”, Felix replied her with an even voice, without looking away from his cauldron.

“Good, better than your friend. And what do you want to be when you grow up Felix Burton? Potions Master mayhap?”

“Alive, but I wouldn’t bet any galleons on it if I were you, Professor.”

“Cheerful one ain’t ya?” She moved on, Felix did not reply her.

Felix, Claudia’s, and Ariana’s were the only potions close to what they should be by the end of the recipe. Anneke’s on the other hand was a brutish black colour. “No, not for me, Potions.” She was heard whispering.

“Excellent, for homework you have this, next class I expect it perfect, so get experimenting, people”, Professor Marvey told them at the class’s end.

After cleaning their cauldrons and Potions tools, they packed their stuff leaving the classroom, for their next class of the day, Transfiguration.

Claudia passed her backpack up against her left shoulder. “That school exchange thingy looks neat, but I doubt my parents will allow me to go, not as long as the war wages on, even if public attacks have stopped.”

“I’m considering the Ugandan school, but I am not sure yet”, Emerick replied.

“I’m going, it’s why I did not come to breakfast. I need to leave Hogwarts, at least for a little while”, came Felix’s reply.

“It’ll be for like eight months, you sure?” Claudia asked him, surprised.

Felix nodded. “I asked Professor Willows earlier about it. I leave at the end of the week and I’ll be back at the end of April or some such.”

“I…we will miss you, can you at least, please, reply to our letters?” She asked him with a trembling voice.

“Sure, although you’d be safer if I didn’t, being related to me in any way is unhealthy”, Felix replied, before entering the Transfiguration classroom.

“That’s…” she stopped talking after a sharp shake of Emerick’s serious-looking face.

“Take your seats and no talking”, Professor Hudson told them, leaning against his desk.

He waited until everyone was seated and silent before standing on his feet and taking a slow step or two towards them, in the middle between the two columns of desks. “As Deputy Headmaster it is within my duties to ensure the Headmistress’ plate remains empty, so she can better focus on running this school. This means blind obedience to all school rules and national and international laws without exceptions or excuses. As your Transfiguration Professor it is my sole duty to teach you the subject and it is your only duty to learn”, his eyes scanning each and every one of them he paused, walking to a Slytherin girl in the middle of the classroom. “Scorcio”, he pointed his wand at her face, removing her makeup, her face cleaned from all of it. “You are not in this class or in this school to find yourself a boyfriend. I do not know what other Professors allow in their classrooms, or how they conduct their lessons, but in my classroom makeup is forbidden”, he told her with an iron gaze.

She gazed defiantly back at him with a smirk. “Who ever said I like boys?”

He flicked his wand at her, aiming for her neck. “In this class you won’t be talking unless to ask or answer a question. Five points from Slytherin for talking in classroom in deviant way. And a further twenty points for talking smack, talking back or being a smartass to a Professor. Your sexual preferences don’t begin to interest me. I will remove the spell that’s preventing you from speaking at the end of class”, he told her before going to every girl with makeup removing it.

A slim, brown-haired, hazel-eyed Slytherin boy raised his hand.

“Yes, what is it, Mr. Nightbloom?” Professor Hudson turned his head to Horacio Nightbloom.

Horacio stood up. “Sir, does it come naturally to you, being a fascist or do you practice?” He sat back down.

Professor Hudson did not seem to find it funny, despite some of the braver students’ snorts and muffled laughs. “Fifty points from Slytherin and one month in detention cleaning and polishing all of Hogwarts’ silver and gold items, starting today after classes’ end for four hours a day.”

“And if I finish them in less than a month?” Horacio pushed his luck.

“…a month, ‘Professor Hudson!’ And you will redo them all until the, now, two months are over, to the last hour of the last day, Mr. Nightbloom”, Professor Hudson replied, before placing the silence spell on Horacio as well.

“Kids nowadays are far too cuddled and spoiled, but you will learn that in this class the sole Master is me, and your emotions and feelings matter not even in the slightest. Your parents send you here to learn and be educated, find yourselves after class time”, he took a breath. “I can assure you all, I do not require your opinion on any matter, now to drakonifors…” he proceeded to his lecture on the drakonifors transfiguration spell, which transforms a target to a dragon.

“This spell will allow you to transform targets to miniature dragons, the advanced form of this spell will be required for your OWLs next year, that spell will transform inanimate and animate targets to proper sized dragons and can be exceedingly dangerous.”

Half an hour of note-taking later they progressed to the practical portion of the lesson. Hudson had them in two rows, one behind the other.

“Row one will test the spell, then row 2 will. I don’t expect anyone of you to do well.”

“Sir, how is Helena and Horacio to perform the spell if they are muted?” Claudia asked.

“Not my problem. Let this be a lesson to them, not to speak in this class without permission, and five points from Gryffindor for asking a question non-related to the spell or class subject”, the professor replied her, without looking away from the center of the class and ahead of the two rows of students.

Most kids did not manage to transform their cauldron to a dragon, in some cases the spell going very wrong transforming the cauldrons to other animals or exploding it. A Gryffindor boy had to be escorted to the Hospital Wing after sustaining minor injuries from the exploded cauldron’s fragments.

“I expected better from Slytherin and Gryffindor…only one Hufflepuff did well. Five points to Hufflepuff. You may leave.”

“Well…that was…what even?” Emerick looked back inside the classroom at their new transfiguration and Deputy Headmaster as they exited the classroom.

“The Governors through Joymother did say, last year, they were going to handpick Professor Horsewood’s replacement. You didn’t anticipate anything better, did you?” Claudia replied him, looking disgusted at the man.

“No, but still…” Emerick sighed.

“He’s going to be trouble, so let us not give him any excuses”, Emerick nodded at Claudia’s statement.

“I’m glad I’m leaving, I don’t need another Cillian in my life right now”, Felix left the classroom, behind them.

“Yeah, sure leave us to deal with him alone”, Claudia replied starting to lose her temper.

“Better alone than dead”, Felix replied her, leaving before she could utter a word, speeding up his stride.

“What the…”

“And I am the socially awkward one? Isn’t it bleeding obvious for heaven’s sake? Don’t try to cheer him up, don’t be angry at him. He’s not only mourning the loss of his best friend and cousin to his own half-brother and sister, he must also be scared half to death Azrail will kill you, me or one or all of the Blakes. So, that means we get to be there for him even and despite to whatever he might throw at us or in his silence”, Emerick reasoned.

“I hate it when you become so clinically correct about an emotional issue…”

“I’ll take that as a compliment”, Emerick chuckled.

“It was…after a fashion”, Claudia teased him.

“You and fashion…” Emerick teased her back.

“That was horribly punny,” Claudia mocked disgust.

“Better than a horrible pun”, Emerick fired back.

“You are going to use everything I say against me aren’t you?” Claudia sighed.

“Only if you speak.”

“If you are ever overcome by a desire to know why you will not have a girlfriend, let me know, I can inform you in great detail.” She contained a laugh.

“Ah, but assuming I am interested in all of that, I am not the only Ravenclaw in school.”

“You’ve certainly become more argumentative over the summer…”

“I was told it is one of my better charms, by let us say a very…cute source.”

“Wait, what? You had a summer fling? You had a girlfriend? Tell me everything!” Claudia’s eyes bulged out.

Emerick began walking slowly away, a huge, smug, self-content grin spreading over his lips.


	2. Chapter 2: Elysion, to Ithake’s shores

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: Elysion, to Ithake’s shores

Professors Willows and Jordan walked side by side along the Corridor leading to the Great Hall, behind them were the students that’d be going to one of the three International Schools of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Uagadou in the mountains of the moon in Uganda, Mahoutokoro in Ivo Jima, Japan and Elysion in Ithake, Greece.

The sun’s rays shone through the glazed stained-glass windows depicting magical creatures and famous witches and wizards of the UK.

They walked in silence until Professor Willows pushed open the Great Hall’s large, oak doors.

Professor Horsewood stood in the middle of the room, between the four rows of wooden tables, in front of three high stools each with a school model on them.

When both Professors and all students had entered the Great Hall, she stepped aside. “Students going to Uagadou, please form a column to the left. For Mahoutokoro please form a column in the center and for Elysion a column to the right”, she waited for them to arrange into three columns. Most students going into the exchange program, including Ethel, had chosen to go to Uagadou with Mahoutokoro second and Elysion third. In fact, other than Felix only another two boys and a girl had picked it.

“Everything has been arranged, and your trunks will wait for you in the school of your choice. While there you will do your best to furthering your education and strengthening international ties. Remember that leaving Hogwarts until the end of April does not mean you will not be representing it and your House. Make us proud”, Professor Horsewood told them. “Each of you will touch the models in front of your column. They are portkeys and will transfer you to the school of your choice. In return each time a student from these schools will send one student to us. Please, start.”

Ethel winked at Felix before touching the model of Uagadou and in a blink she vanished with a pop, as did another two students, a girl, and a boy, for Mahoutokoro and Elysion.

A second later, two girls and a boy popped in, holding the models in their hands. The girl from Uganda was a sixth-year looking girl, wearing a light-blue dress embroidered with brightly coloured geometric shapes of yellow, green, and red with an orange tunic above and wrapped around her head, allowing her black hair to flow out of holes in the fabric in fine ponytails, her hazel eyes beaming. The fifth-year girl from Japan was clothed in a blue and black kimono with wooden sandals and a collar extruding outwards in the front of her neck. She wore her hair short, just above the ear line cut in sharp angles. She looked at her new surroundings and faces with inquisitive yet mysterious eyes. The boy from Elysion, a fourth-year, had a silver-coloured fedora hat on, and navy blue and red robes with a white shirt and black pants. “Hello my peeps!” He declared beaming.

“Welcome to Hogwarts, please step to my right”, Professor Horsewood told them gently yet with a strict tone.

Eventually it was Felix’s time, he took a step standing opposite the stool with Elysion’s model on it and after a moment’s hesitation he grabbed hold of it, feeling the known tag as Hogwarts disappeared replaced from a blink of black darkness and then Elysion.

He looked around on his new surroundings, blinking rapidly to adjust his eyes on the increased light. What appeared to be Elysion’s Great Hall was a semi spherical chamber, round with a clear, transparent dome above them, being held up by four fifty meters high Corinthian-type columns of blue and red-veined marble. The floor was of the purest white marble, so refined and polished the sky reflected off it through the glass dome, making it appear as if reflecting on water.

In front of each column was a wooden table shaped to follow the room’s curvature, above the three of tables hang three banners, each on the space between the columns. A white Pegasus on blue background, a blue trireme on red background and a red spearhead on white background. Each banner hang from a trigonal wooden frame suspended on a rope. Each frame bore Elysion’s Coat of Arms. A round shield divided in three equal parts, Pegasus, trireme, and spearhead with their respecting colours, a larger E above them in the center of the shield and a white ribbon below it, its ends pinned on the shield with an Alpha and an Omega. Inside it written in Hellenika was Elysion’s moto “Η γνώση κόποις κτήται”.

The three House tables formed an almost complete circle with the Professors’ table behind Felix. Elysion’s banner hang above it.

“Welcome to Elysion, stand behind me”, a tall, muscular, bald man tattooed from head to toe, told him in a heavy voice. He wore black pants, open chested red, blue, and white robes and a silver circlet made from three different spiral designs entwined together on his head,

Felix saw two rows of students standing behind Elysion’s Headmaster, or at least Felix guessed he was Elysion’s Headmaster. The students behind the Headmaster wore the same coloured robes as the boy he had seen arrive in Hogwarts, looking at the robes from a closer distance he saw the Elysion crest on the right torso side of the robes. The boys wore black pants and the girls dresses reaching their ankles. None of them wore fedora hats though.

He stood behind the man waiting for all exchange students to arrive and Elysion’s to leave, giving him some time to better observe Elysion’s Great Hall.

Across them, at the middle of the Professors’ table stood a larger armchair with a set of wings and two sets of spears behind it, its legs ended in horse hooves, its arms carved with various magical creatures of Greece and a large A embossed while all tables’ chairs were placed on the outside so everyone seated would be looking on the inside of the domed structure. Leaning against the middle of the Professors’ table there stood a metal shield and in the very center of the room there was a niche in the marble floor.

Looking up Felix saw a section between the end of the Corinthian-type Columns and the glass dome supported by smaller ionic-type columns connected with arches. The ionic columns looked to be evenly spaced except for three spots where the columns were missing leaving collapsed arches and three voids.

Felix saw students gazing down at them from between the arches.

The glass dome, although enchanted was not displaying the outside weather.

“I guess they don’t need it with a full glass dome above their heads”, Felix thought to himself. Diagonally from the tables four sets of oak doors, standing out against the walls’ green polished granite, marked the Great Hall’s entrances and exits.

When all the transfers were done the tattooed man turned around, his hands behind his back.

He surveyed them for a moment, his brown eyes pausing at every single one of them, like a general ready to send soldiers into battle. “My name’s Aristides Atreos, I am Headmaster of Elysion, or Archontas, or Archon. The students behind you will be your mentors for the duration of your stay here. It is Friday and you have three days to acclimate, come Monday you start classes along with everyone else. I expect all of you will behave honourably. Cause any kind of damage or trouble and you’ll be back at your school within the hour. As our language is Hellenic, and our classes are in Hellenic or Latin, your Mentors will aid you in learning and understanding as well as with anything else you might need, in Elysion they might as well be your family. Professor Athena Thimopotamou is your program’s liaison in Elysion, you may go to her with any questions or problems your Mentors may not be able to answer.

“Most of our faculty and students speak, write and understand English, so you will be writing any homework, assignments and essays as well as any exams in English”, Elysion’s Archon walked to the Professors’ table, and grabbed the shield with one hand, lifting it off the floor and carrying it to the center of the room where with one motion he placed it standing on the floor-niche.

He then turned facing them. “This is Odysseus’ shield. He is one of this School’s founders and first Head of the Wonderers, that’d be the trireme. You will each hold it and try and lift it for a second or two, the bronze shield’s front engraving will change and sort you into your house accordingly”, the Archon stood a meter or two away from it on the bronze side.

“You go first”, he pointed at a boy from the Ugandan school. He walked to it, his blond-dyed Rasta hair swinging left and right over his School’s brightly coloured robes. He held the shield from its leather-strap holders on its back and tried lifting it, but the shield resisted glowing gold. He was sorted into the Olympians as a Pegasus engraving appeared on the front of the shield.

Next there came the Ravenclaw girl from Hogwarts who managed to lift it without it glowing gold. She was sorted into Doriis. Eventually there came Felix’s turn.

He walked up to it and passing his left arm inside the leather straps and gripping the second one with his fist, he lifted it off with apparent ease making it glow gold as a trireme appeared in its front.

After all the new students had been sorted into their new Houses for the duration of their stay in Elysion, Professor Atreos spoke again. “These will be your Mentors as I announce them. Corvus Orvis, Marios Krateos. Adroa Zuluka, Selene Hraklidous. Monoke Yamoko, Ioustinianos Paleos. Felix Burton, Bellerophon Atreos”, Archontas Atreos continued announcing Mentoree and Mentor couples until every exchange student was paired with an Elysion student Mentor.

“Some final notes. Dinners are at nine in the evening, breakfasts at seven in the morning and lunches at three in the afternoon. Your Mentors will tell you the rules of this school and help you with anything else. For those of you third year and up, you can visit this country’s wizard-only village, Atali. First visit’s next month. On behalf of Elysion’s faculty and the students I welcome you amongst our ancient and hallowed grounds. I hope you enjoy your stay with us and learn as much as you can.” Professor Atreos placed Odysseus’ shield against the Professors’ table center before leaving.

Exchange and Elysion students looked at each other and after the initial awkwardness left them behind, they begun to mingle.

“Bellerophon, nice to meet you”, the boy extended his hand at him with a wide smile adorning his high-cheeked face, his hazel eyes shining bright with hues of green and his black hair cut short with a tail-like tuft extending to his shoulders in his head’s rear. Bellerophon was around his height and weight. Tall and lean, yet with more meat and potatoes about him than Felix.

“Nice to meet you, my name’s Elario Felix Burton, call me Felix.”

“Cool, we’re in the same House, so follow me, I imagine you want to settle in before I give you the tour of the place?”

“Sounds good”, Felix told him in an emotionless face.

Felix followed Bellerophon out of one of the Great Hall’s arched doorways to a circular-curved corridor, then out another arched doorway to a straight-line corridor with stained and clear windows in between ionic columned arches, outside he could see the sea, a tower to his left and the shoreline covered with shrubs, resin pine trees and some olive trees in the distance, below a mountain top covered with more low-lying shrubs and bushes.

On the corridor’s right-side windows, as they were walking it, Felix saw more walls and towers.

They entered a crossroads vaulted anti-chamber with four arched entrances, the one they had entered through, a similar one opposite them leading to another straight-line corridor and one on either side of them leading to more circular-curved corridors.

Each entrance had an enchanted suit of armour holding either spears or Byzantine scimitars in black-leather scabbards, which were not as curved and leaner at the end of the blade than their Arabian or Turkish cousins, with an eagle-head pommel at the end of the hilt and a silver guard with a cross on either end. The suits animated as if they were worn by human beings, even though they stood empty.

“Oh look, more students pass us by without giving us notice, or the time of day!” One of the eight suits of armour voiced in a dry voice.

“What d’ya expect? Cheers of happiness and acknowledgement for keeping them safe?” Another one went. “They are kids, they don’t care about us.”

“As you may have noticed, this school’s suits of armour are rather…spirited”, Bellerophon chuckled. “But I wouldn’t go attacking the school if I was anyone who wanted to, can’t really kill an enchanted suit of armour with no host, or even a non-being like a ghost.”

“Enchantments can be broken”, Felix noted.

They entered the second straight-line corridor, similar to the first one before walking it to a large cube-shaped vaulted, high-ceiling chamber with three towers going through it in a trigonal distance between the three of them, with one being on ninety-degree angle to the other two.

Unlike the other entrances Felix had seen these three, to the towers, were not arched, and the towers were of limestone and rectangular rather than cylindrical. Each entrance had a hollow triangle above it.

“This is the oldest part of the castle, the original parts that still survive are from the first school, founded by Odysseus and the other two witches back in Mycenean times. The school’s history is as turbulent as that of Hellada’s”, Bellerophon explained.

“That’s…old”, Felix stated feeling awed, even in his current state of mind.

“That it is, the wonderers’ tower is that one”, Bellerophon pointed at the one closest to them. “The one on our right-hand side is the Doriis tower and the one at the far end is the Olympians tower. I hope you have good stamina, cause there’s five hundred steep steps to climb to the common room and the dorms, thankfully there’s windows along the way for ventilation.”

“Oh joy”, Felix replied dryly, as they started climbing the stairs to the common room. “This School isn’t built for comfort, is it?”

“It has been besieged at least ten times and it’s been raised to the ground thrice, no comfort isn’t really what the Archons who rebuilt it had in mind”, Bellerophon told him, climbing the stairs in front of him, and taking fleeting looks behind his shoulder to make sure Felix was following him alright.

“Founded by Odysseus…that’s one of the Trojan war heroes, right? That makes Elysion one of the oldest schools in existence.”

“It is old, but it is not ranked amongst the oldest because it’s been destroyed almost completely three times, the third one during the second world war.”

“So?”

“So, the original school was destroyed by Alexander the Great, then by the Ottoman’s in one thousand four hundred and ninety-nine and then by the Italians and Germans during world war two. So, while the institution, the dorm towers, and a lot of the manuscripts in the library are from Odysseus’ time, the rest of the school, really, isn’t.”

“I see.”

Panting and sweating, Felix entered the common room, the staircase going higher still, for the dorm rooms. Immediately he had a weird sense he had entered a sea bourn vessel. The large rectangular room had no fireplace, yet it never got cold during winter, sail-cloth hammocks were fastened on metal poles pinned on floor and ceiling forming up seats around a central point in the chamber, where a bunch of books hovered seemingly in a pillar of water, enchanted to display caustic fractals caused by the light refracting through the water onto a vessel’s hull or sea floor. Torches hanging upside down from the ceiling and sideways on the walls provided light, along with the round windows. Four red tapestries, one per side, hang from the crepe-coloured megalithic limestone rectangularly carved tower’s stones, with the House’s emblem, a blue trireme.

“It’s nice here, why do I feel as if the floor is swaying up, down and left right?” Felix asked, looking down, expecting to see a boat’s hull swaying gently on the current’s motion.

“Sea legs, it’s an enchantment, and it’s only a sensory illusion, obviously, but it makes for an amazing sleeping aid.”

“What are the other two Houses’ common rooms?” Felix inquired next, sitting on a hammock, feeling it sway and stretch under him.

“Doriis is what you would expect of an army barracks mixture between ancient Mycenae and Byzantine Imperium, in all-white and red furniture and textiles, and the Olympians’ common room…can you imagine in your mind the cliché-est possible version of the Palace of the gods in Olympus’ top? Imagine that in a stables version. Snobbish, arrogant little twerps they are!”

“Wonderers dream afar, their minds travelling places their mortal bodies go cannot. Doriis fight foes, sometimes physical and sometimes in their thoughts. Olympians fly further than their sake would indicate, extending their reach and hearts beyond mortals’ lifespans. Wonderers are Elysion’s mind, Doriis are Elysion’s arms and Olympians’ are Elysion’s hearts. Each have their advantages each have their sores.” A boy lying in a hammock on the other side of the room, his voice low, determined, and resolute. “So Elysion’s founders decreed, so the three Houses were created not only to declare what each founder desired in a human, but to proclaim a human must have a mind that dreams, a heart that bursts with passion, and arms that labour to create what the mind wonders and the heart desires. If these work in unity the human is able to live a life of mind and body in good health.”

“Always informative, Socrates”, Bellerophon told the hammock-lying boy without turning his head. Socrates raised a hand waving at their direction, without standing up, from the book he was reading.

“One should endevour to be as best informed as possible. Exercise of the mind and of the body, they said. If only bodily exercise was as easy.”

“Easy enough for me”, Bellerophon declared with a smug smile.

“Then, one has to wonder are you a mind or arms?”

“Wonderer through and through.” Bellerophon told Socrates. “Let’s go show you the dorms.”

Felix followed him up the remaining stairs to the dorms. Whereas Hogwarts’ dorm room slept five kids, here there were seven poster beds. Three horizontally arranged on either side of a corridor leading to a seventh vertically placed at the end. With the door and the only window parallel to each other and the two beds. Curtained tapestries with the Wonderers’ symbol gave the occupants of the beds privacy.

“The bed nearest the window is free, I’m near the door one.” Bellerophon pointed to it.

“Thanks, I can hear the sea, is that an enchantment as well?” Felix saw his trunk appear next to his bed, along with Caladrius’ empty cage.

“óxi…eh, I mean no, some ninety five percent of the school is suspended above the sea on columns, what you hear is the sea. I’ll wait for you downstairs so you can settle in, then we can show you the place, well I can show you”, Bellerophon left the room, descending the stairs.

Ten minutes later Felix appeared on the common room entrance. “Ready.”

Bellerophon walked over from one of the round windows, looking outside, descending the stairs after Felix.

They exited into the tritower vaulted chamber and then into the straight-line corridor. At its end, in the crossroads room with the four entrances Bellerophon took a left turn into one of the circular-curved corridors walking to its end past an entrance to another straight-line couloir to his left-hand side.

“So, now we’re above the sea, on columns?” Felix inquired, taking a look outside a window, with the Great Hall’s glass dome shinning bright reflecting the sun’s rays. “And how is it the seagulls don’t make a mess of the glass dome?” Felix asked, seeing the flocks of sea gulls and other birds fly over the glass dome, or sit on it.

“Yes, we are, you’ll see it better from the library, later. And a mixture of House-elves and cleaning spell wards”, Bellerophon replied him without breaking his stride.

“From the library?” Bellerophon’s lips curved in a knowing smile but he didn’t reply.

“This is the Astronomy tower, and the school’s tallest. In here, are the Astronomy, Divination, Arithmancy classrooms and some of the Professors’ offices.”

“Cool. How many steps this time?”

“Many, but less steep than the dorms’ towers”, Bellerophon told Felix raising a foot to the tower’s first step.

“It is most assuredly different to Hogwarts”, Felix started ascending the gray granite steps.

Fifteen minutes later they stood atop the tower’s terrace, with the one and a half meter tall parapets in a rectangular shape around an inner circular-shaped tower.

“Circular tower inside a rectangular one?” Felix asked, looking around.

“The inner tower is new, built in the eleven-hundreds after a failed siege by the Latin states, the outer shell is older, from Hellenistic times, re-built a couple times over since. The second time it was erected was after the new tower was constructed.”

“A circle inside a rectangle?”

“Yeah, you know us Hellenes and our fascination with trigonometry and geometry…”, Bellerophon rolled his eyes.

Felix took a few steps to the parapets’ edge looking below. He saw a crescent-shaped port made from volcanic red stone and blue marble, with two docks leading into a larger rock on top of which the Astronomy tower was built. A red stone path climbed from the port around the tower to an entrance.

“So, that’s Elysion’s port down there, that’s where students arrive and depart from every year. To our right-hand, above the Ionian Sea is the Quidditch pitch”, Bellerophon told Felix, pointing him to their right, where Felix saw a Quidditch stadium floating fifty meters above the sea surface, the bottom of the spectators’ tower stands ended in frayed wooden planks covered with white cloth sheets swaying in the light breeze.

“That’s…something. How deep is the sea?”

“Some fifty meters or more, I think? And we have a sea serpent guardian, or Hellenic sea dragon, or Poseidon’s wyrm. It doesn’t fly, but it is majestic to see it rise above the waves. It comes out mostly during winter though.

“Is it aggressive? Does it breathe fire?” Felix enquired his interest peaked.

“It is a sea guardian, protecting the marine world, no fire breathing but it can communicate with every species under the surface, it is essentially a gigantic sea serpent and it eats coral and stones, churning out fine grain sand. The rocks around Elysion are all magically-warded so it doesn’t eat them and bring the school down”, Bellerophon laughed.

“Sea serpent? Interesting”, Felix turned walking along the outer tower wall’s parapets clockwise. “A Quidditch pitch above the sea waves…Charles would have loved this. What’s the two towers to the right of the stadium? What’s the Sea Guardian’s name?”

“Charms tower, and transfiguration tower, second tallest in the school. And actually…there’s more than one but we ever see one. Their natural habitat is in the deepest parts of the Calypso deep, outside of Pylos, in the Peloponnese. It is also where they grow their young. That’s where they gather every summer, to reproduce then every winter they spend it in shallower waters in the Mediterranean protecting the marine world beneath the waves. The one we can see, we call Oceanus, from our mythological Titan who supposedly was the eldest son of Uranus and Gaia, and creator of all the world’s seas and oceans.”

“Fascinating, how deep is the Calypso deep? How does Oceanus look like?”

“It is nigh short of five thousand three hundred meters deep and no, I won’t tell you, no description can ever do it justice. Come winter you’ll see it for yourself. Next tower is the Herbology tower, the final classrooms tower is the potions tower on the other end between the dorms tower, or tricastle and the astronomy tower”, Bellerophon pointed at a final tower.

“What is the smaller cylindrical building at the top of the three Houses?” Felix pointed at a smaller turret connected by bridges only to the three houses, Elysion’s flag flying on top of it.

“That’s the Headmaster’s or Archon’s office”, Bellerophon explained.

“So, basically, the towers are based on solid rock foundations, and all the in between corridors are either suspended on top of…columns or are bridges between the two? Amazing. I mean I can even see the circular-curved buildings are above the waves!” Felix saw the sea surface reveal the bottom part of one of the circular building’s bottoms, and the top of the columns underneath. “How do waves or earthquakes not bring it down?”

“Combination of modern engineering, ancient knowledge and magical wards on both buildings and the seabed”, Bellerophon sat on one of the parapets as Felix walked around the edge.

“Great Hall in the center, its’ foundations are on the sea floor?”

“Not…exactly. In my opinion the Great Hall, the underhall and the Library under it are by far the most magnificent, awe-inspiring parts of the School.”

“Underhall? Under it? I don’t understand”, Felix furrowed his brows together, his face grimacing in bewilderment and question.

“The tricastle, and the towers along with some parts of the library are the only ones that are based on rock or soil. The tricastle is also the School’s main entrance, beyond it everything this side of the mountain are part of the school’s grounds, we have two groves, one with olive trees and the other one has orange trees and there’s a lot of creatures, like the six-legged erimanthióxiro with ten tusks, don’t approach them safer that way, bad tempered assholes, the three-long-tailed feral ailourógato, which I find stupid as a name, because we’ve essentially named it catcat… -Bellerophon shrugged- its three tails are, each, two and a half meters long. Something needs to predate them six-legged porks, lots of tritons and mermaids, as well as kataigidópoula, storm-birds. Their flying quite literally creates rain and thunder. Well, to be accurate, their feathers possess a substance which triggers moisture in the air to condense into low-lying clouds, when there’s a lot of them, and they like to flock into groups of hundreds of thousands, that can become a rain storm with great ease and dust in the air reacts with their under-feathers creating static electricity…rain and thunder. Now multiply that by a couple of hundred thousand individuals.”

“Tritons?” Felix raised an eyebrow.

“Mediterranean merpeople are half dolphin half man. Males are called Tritons and the females either Sirénes or Derkétos and their kids are cute as all heck. Also, they are initially born from diaphanous fish eggs as large as an adult man’s palm and thereafter they are fed and grown as mammals, breastfeeding from their mums and in fact while the egg or eggs are still inside a mermaid’s womb it is connected to her via something very closely resembling an umbilical cord.”

“Absolutely astonishing!” Felix exclaimed.

“Sometimes in the spring and summer if we’re lucky we can see them around the port or swimming with the Frigate “Alkionis” when it approaches or departs the port, along with dolphins.

“Sounds beautiful, what does Alkíonida mean?”

“Alkionis, accent on the i, is a bird, I think you call it…Kingfisher? Our mythology has it she used to be a queen in Ancient Greece, married to Kúekas King of Traxida. They would sometimes call each other Dia and Hra, Zeus and Hera. This angered the gods and while Kúekas was seaborn on his way to the Oracle, Zeus struck his ship with a thunder sinking it. Legend has it when Alkionis or Alkionida laid eyes on her husband’s body on the rocks she fell to her death, unwilling to live without him. The gods took pity on them and transformed them into the Kingfisher birds, forever bound to dive into the sea to eat fish. Now you ask me that sounds more like insult on injury, but what do I know!”

“Sad…”

“Most Ancient Hellenic Mythology stories are or have such elements in them. We know tragedy and sadness, our history’s bathed in them.”

“Are your merpeople peaceful or aggressive when you get near them?”

“Depends doesn’t it? If they got near your kid how would you be? They are sentient beings and they can talk our language. I bet you anything Odysseus and his crew killed one of their kids, they absolutely love their kids to a fault, or somehow pissed them off and then they attacked him, but to the victor go the spoils…and the storytelling. They are quite friendly when they swim around the school’s Frigate, haven’t tried to sink us into crashing into rocks yet either.”

“It’s a spectacular sight, Elysion…Charles would have loved it here. He’d be all over you for more creature descriptions, more stories…”, Felix sighed.

“Who’s he?” Bellerophon stood up.

“He…was my best friend and cousin”, Felix looked away.

“Couldn’t stand your shiny disposition?”

“He was murdered right in front of my eyes, last year”, Felix started descending the stairs.

“Fuck, I’m sorry!” Bellerophon run after him.

“It’s okay, I’ve earned my due, my half-brother meant to kill me and…my half-sister fucked the both of us over. House of pain immemorial, I understand it now”, Felix replied him.

“Well, at least you’re not related to Azrail Gaunt. Felix Burton’s a nice name.” Bellerophon tried to change subject.

“Maternal, father died two years ago, good riddance”, Felix’s voice changed from sad to shimmering in an instant.

“Not the most stable of families are you? Then again…I can’t claim to be in one either.”

“My mother’s family, she is Charles’ mum’s sister, is stable and she’s the absolute best mum. Everyone else…well, they’re fucking mental”, Felix circled a finger around next to his right ear.

“I like your accent”, Bellerophon declared him, trying not to chuckle.

“Accent? What accent?”

“How you talk, very British.”

“Thanks, I guess? What do you mean the Library is under the Great Hall?”

“Follow me”, Bellerophon didn’t reply him, instead led him back down the Astronomy tower across the corridors and bridges to the hall outside the Great Hall.

“Now, the first time you experience this can be...disorienting. Remember that while your “up” and the “real up” may not be the same, you still see your up as up. So, with that in mind, sway to the left like the tile under your feet can rotate on its axis”, Bellerophon told him. “Do so with your whole body, and think it with your mind, don’t hesitate in your motion.”

“Uhm…okay…woooooooaaahhhh!!” Felix did as instructed by Bellerophon to find himself, actually, flip on his axis. Now, he was staring at the sea’s bottom and a smaller glass dome under the Great Hall’s circumference, where ten glass tubular staircases floated between it and ten half-domes situated on the seabed, amongst the crevices and rocks.

“How can I see…like I’m up when I’m down? How can I walk at…the back of the Great Hall’s floor and not fall down?” Felix barraged his Mentor with questions.

“Magic, magic and yet more magic? The library and this little spectacle are the work of another of the School’s founders, although it has been rebuilt from scratch at least once”, Bellerophon seemed accustomed to the feeling of looking at the world upside down yet down upside. He walked to the nearest tubular staircase, spiraling towards one of the half-domes. As they walked towards it, up became up and down, down.

All ten half-domes were also connected to each other through transparent-glass ten-meter-high aisles, suspended above the sea floor by arched columns.

“We are some thirty something meters below the surface, if you look up you can see the colonnades supporting the school”, Felix looked up to where Bellerophon was pointing at with his right index finger. Three cavalcades of two sets of four columns each supported each section of the school. The center cavalcade’s columns ended in parabolic arches while the external ones in rampant arches. The columns in the deepest parts of the sea floor were as high as sixty meters tall. The columns as well as the seabed were all covered in sponges, dead man’s fingers, false red corals, and other marine flora while fish of all sizes swam about.

Inside the half-dome a combination of sunlight refracting through the sea water, torches and swarms of enchanted fireflies provided light through the bookshelves and desks. The bookshelves ended in parabolic arches supporting the glass half-dome.

“This is…just…look at all the fish!” Felix exclaimed looking outside.

“Fish”, Bellerophon said in a thick Hellenic ascent.

“Yeah, what I said?”

“You said feesh”, Bellerophon tried to keep a straight face.

“Fish?” furrowed his eyebrows together.

“I’m just messing with you man”, Bellerophon laughed.

“Ah, okay. Cool”, Felix walked about the ten half-domes marveling at the interior and exterior constructions. “Do not Muggle sea vessels come near? Come to think of it where even in…Hellada? Are we?”

“They think it’s military installations, and so it is strictly forbidden to approach from land or sea. Polemofagoi and Muggle military police make sure no one strays in by intent or mistake”, Bellerophon explained.

“Polemowhatnow?”

Bellerophon chuckled. “Πολεμοφάγοι, Polemofágoi, Wareaters. Our version of Aurors. In any case, this is most of the castle, there are signs for the classrooms, they are in Hellenic, but you’ll learn them easy enough as they also have subject emblems on them. Your timetable should be on your trunk when we return based on what subjects you had back in England”, Bellerophon replied him as they ascended the tubular staircases to the underhall.

“What do you do for fun?” Felix asked as reality upside downed.

“There’s Cobstones, chess, Quidditch, dueling with either wands or enchanted xiphoi, reading, the Herbology gardens in the two groves, walking in the surrounding mountains and island’s countryside, even amongst muggles, and caring for the various creatures, in the sea or land, along with the Professor’s aid. In the summer there’s swimming and sunbathing and from year three on there’s the scheduled visits to Atali. There’s also the preparation for the “Charon’s path”, but that’s usually year six or seven on. Although I would not in all honesty call that fun as much as masochism”, Bellerophon laughed at his own joke.

“What’s that?”

“Eons ago there was the Necromancer’s Oracle in Acheron’s springs, the Ferryman’s river. It’s done by Sixth or Seventh-years as part of a come of age rights. Each year my dad asks if anyone fourth year on wants to attempt it before their seventh-year. It is not what I would characterize as easy, and definitely not fun.”

“Ferryman’s river…Charon’s path…Shadeglass the Ferryman’s vessel…”, Felix mumbled to himself.

“You know of Ancient Hellenic mythology?” Bellerophon raised an eyebrow.

“Not really, just the basics. Why?”

“The Shadeglass was what the Oracle at Acherontion used to use to see her visions from the realm of the dead. It was stolen millennia ago, first by the Persians, then Alexander brought it back, then the Romans stole it, used it for their Sybil in Cumae, then its tracks were lost when the Italian Peninsula was raided by tribes during the collapse of the Roman Empire, it was found many centuries later just before World War 2 broke out by a Hellenic Historian of Magic. He found it in China where it had served as the cup of their God of Death, Yànwàng. Then German and Italian forces destroyed both the school and what remained of the non-muggle Acherontion where they found neither the Shadeglass nor the Oracle who of course had died thousands of years ago. In any case, the start of the year is on Sunday, when the new students arrive.”

“But you and I are here, and we’ve seen other students, in both the Great Hall’s upper level when I arrived and around the castle?”

“Second years and up arrive on Friday, New First years arrive on Sunday. Gives us and the Professors time to settle in before the new students arrive and term starts”, Bellerophon explained.

Bellerophon was now following Felix as he set about further exploring the castle, and the various classrooms.

“You have Prefects, Head boy/girl, Heads of Houses and so on?” Felix asked, crossing the bridge to the Potions tower.

“Yeah, we call them Lavarophóroi, Λαβαροφόροι, meaning “banner holders”, they are meant to uphold each House’s principles and ideals. Head boy/girl are Prótoi ton Próton, Πρώτοι των Πρώτων, meaning First of Firsts, My dad’s Headmaster or Árxontas, Άρχοντας…”

“Árchon?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Professors are Kathigitai, καθηγηταί, or singular, Kathigitis, Καθηγητής. Let’s see what else?” They continued talking throughout the day.


	3. Chapter 3: Felix’s Défteros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3: Felix’s Défteros

Felix sat in the Wonderers’ table, next to Bellerophon, the moonlight bathing them in silver light, through the glass dome. The enchanted ceiling above them displaying scenes from the school’s past in iridescently luminescent light. A man with short black hair and pointy beard and piercing blue eyes waved a golden staff above his head with muscular hands before smashing it against the trireme’s hull.

“Oh, I love these displays during the start-of-year Ceremony”, Bellerophon whispered to Felix. “Meet Odysseus the canniest wizard ever.” A shockwave thundered off from the vessel sending quakes across the sea swarming the coast with tidal waves, flooding defensive embarkments and screaming soldiers. The iridescently luminescent lights changed with every motion to display the different environments and figures.

Next the enchanted display changes to a woman with long black hair and cello-like body, tied to a rock with golden chains, wearing a silver-threaded gown and tunic. The sea raged below the rock she was tied on, deep blue menacing waves. Her face hung forward, her lips chanting inaudible spells, as a man with golden locks flew on a Pegasus, battling a sea dragon, with the upper body of a dragon and the lower body of a fish. One hand holding on the Pegasus’ white mane and the other one grasping a dory, a spear of the ancient Hellenic world.

The sea dragon roared in pain as a spell tore at its wings. “Andromeda, most feared of witches, the Muggle legend has it Perseus saved her from the sea dragon sent by Poseidon after her mother Cassiopeia committed Hubris calling her more beautiful than the Nereids. Wizard lore has it different. It was a battle between a Wizard and two witches. A war that led to the trojan war. After both their war and the Trojan one had ended, they decided to try and make peace and so made this school. Andromeda always loved, it is said, to rule over men, over kingdoms, over their hearts and souls and so she created spells to control humans”, Bellerophon told Felix, his eyes watching the enchanted show above their heads.

“Fascinating”, Felix whispered back, watching as intensely. “Do these sea dragons exist still?”

“They were wiped out centuries ago, they’d wreak havoc in shipping lanes, so Odysseus made it his life’s work to eradicate them, you didn’t think it is all really because he wanted to come back here, do you? He was at war with Andromeda and Callirrhoe, then he was at war in Asia Minor, then he went around the Mediterranean killing off each and every sea dragon he could find. Then he returned back home and to the victor go the spoils and the telling of tales”, Bellerophon replied as the dragon fell dead and Perseus landed on the rock, Perseus slicing at the golden chains.

The visual changed to a woman standing in a cave, writing in a book with a quill made from a tree twig and prism ink, the more Felix tried to concentrate on it, to discern what colour it was the more colours it changed, blue, black, white, red, green, blue, black yellow. She wore a black tunic wrapped around her body, her golden-crimson hair caught behind her head and her eyes glowing silver. After the page was written she left down the twig, picking up a wand, curved and manipulated to an “8” shape and tapped it once on the page casting spells, making the page glow gold and the letters shift and change before binding the page into a book with more pages. The visual flowed as if liquid, now the witch stood over the other two, man and woman, Odysseus, and Andromeda. The Book she had been writing under her armpit she held her wand at the other two and with a flick his staff and her tunic vanished into mist.

“Your school year starts late”, Felix commented as the enchantments above their heads changed.

“June to September is too hot to be in school”, Bellerophon replied, shifting his gaze from the ceiling to his father, sitting on his armchair across the room from them. “school year is from September ten to June first, with exams. Only year seven exams take a week longer because of Charon’s path.”

“It takes a week to complete?” Felix asked, as Elysion’s Archon stood up from his carved chair.

“Nah, usually takes about two to three days depending on how lost you get, but afterwards you are given a couple of days of rest, then year seven exams start, but it’s a week later than everyone else.”

“I see.”

The Hall went silent as Aristides stood in front of the podium, Odysseus’ shield right behind him, and in front of the Professors’ table. The new first-year students stood at the room’s center by the niche, shifting from one leg to the other, nervously.

“Another year begins in Elysion School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Before we proceed to the Shield-bearing ceremony and sort our new students to their houses a word or two. This year we have the honour of hosting students from foreign lands and international Schools. From Hogwarts in England, from Uagadou in Uganda and Mahoutokoro in Japan. I expect all of this school’s students to behave honourably towards them and aid in strengthening international ties within our Wizarding community. Mr. Iatropoulos, our school’s caretaker has asked me to remind you all the list of banned items is in the board outside the Great Hall, any student caught in possession of any of these items will be given the appropriate punishment. Now, without further delay let us sort some students.” Professor Atreos stepped down from the podium and taking hold of the shield he walked over to the new students, placing it on the niche.

“Make a line”, he ordered them and waited for them to create a line. “You will each hold the shield and its front will change into the emblems of one of the three Houses, as you are sorted you will know your House and you will seat in its table. Begin.”

Unlike Hogwarts, there was no Sorting Hat’s song, and no other vocalization of each student’s traits or House other than Professor Atreos telling each student his or her House aloud.

A timid-looking fluffy-looking boy with brown long hair went up to the shield, wrapping his ample, trembling fingers around the leather straps, his hazel eyes looking ready to water up.

He tried lifting it but no matter how he struggled the shield did not rise from the niche on the floor.

“Doriis”, Professor Atreos announced in a clear voice.

The boy looked thunderstruck. “Butbutbut…sir, my mum was an Olympian…dad too.”

Archon Atreos looked at him with kind yet strict eyes. “The shield knows you better than you know yourself. Your parents, I’m sure, did their House proud as will you. You are in Elysion, your parents were here, now you become your own person and sit in your House’s table, Mr. Iákinthos”, the boy pouted but did not respond as he took his seat in the Doriis table.

A girl came up next, with a smug smirk and glittering blue eyes and held on to Odysseus’ shield with abundant self-confidence. After a second the shield lifted off the floor but glow it did not.

“Wonderers, Mrs. Athanatos.”

She looked crestfallen with no lack of anger but speak she did not as she stepped over to the Wonderers table with fists clenched.

Felix noticed how sometimes the shield glowed, but the student could not lift it off the floor, or the student could lift it but there was no glow or the student both lifted it and it’d glow. “How come there is never no glow and no lifting it?” Felix asked Bellerophon.

“That’s a Mundane. Like with his bow, Odysseus made this shield first and foremost to filter the Mundanes from the wizardfolk, then he altered the spells in the shield to also sort people in Houses based on personality traits.”

“So, glow, lift or both correspond to each of the three Houses?” Felix asked next.

“No, there are many theories as to what those mean or how they correlate to the three Houses. My father thinks they have to do with one’s magical ability. Socrates seems to think they have to do with key personality traits, but he has this far been unable to say which trait may be connected to glow or lift or both”, Bellerophon shrugged.

When all first-year students sat in their respective Houses’ tables Professor Atreos picked up Odysseus’ shield placing it back against the Professors’ table front, before sitting back in his armchair.

He clasped his hand and food apparated on the tables. Most of which, food and beverages alike, were completely unknown to Felix. Long skewers of lamb or beef covered with spices and a red sauce or a garlic-yogurt sauce, this one in particular Felix found most pleasing, various stuffed vegetables, large tomatoes, peppers or aubergines with rice, raisins and other fillings, cinnamon, or cardamom as well as other spices. Various white and yellow cheese Felix had never tasted before. Some of the white cheese was very soft, some of it was very runny, creamy and with various flavours, like saffron or cumin. The taste of olive oil was omnipresent, in most dishes. Vegetables also came raw in salads, there was one with tomatoes a white creamy cheese which clotted together when picked up with a fork and basil, another one was all green with leaves of plants Felix had no name for. Another one had spinach, pomegranate, apple bits and balsamic vinegar with mustard.

Bellerophon opened the lid from a ceramic pan. “Yum, goat stew! Gotta love them small onions”, he grinned wide picking up a hefty soup spoon serving himself an ample quantity.

“What are these?” Felix picked up a fried, cylindrical-shaped, greenish item from a platter.

“Fried zucchini in coriander and cinnamon, saffron and paprika sauce”, Bellerophon replied with a mouthful of goat stew.

“My gawd…this is delightful!” Felix announced with a mouthful of lamp skew and a fork-full of stuffed tomato. “This is as well! Who knew you could stuff a tomato full of rice, raisins and meat!” Felix kept stuffing himself with all the new smells and flavours, yet for all his enthusiasm his face remained smileless.

“I know right? And get used to this, you’ll be eating all sorts of stuff like this until you return back to England”, Bellerophon chuckled, after swallowing some of the tomato salad. He forked some of the green salad with the pomegranate.

Half an hour later everyone was happily stuffed when Professor Atreos stood up, pointing his wand at his neck. “Before you all head to your common rooms and beds, it is customary for Elysion’s Archon to ask if any fourth, fifth and sixth years want to partake in the Charon’s Path. The Charon’s path is a rite of passage for those students graduating from the school in their seventh year. Is there anyone not in their Seventh year who wish to attempt the Charon’s Path?”

“Aye, I do, sir”, Felix stood up. A Fifth-year girl and two Sixth-year boys also rose from their seats.

“Interesting, does Felix Burton have a second?” Professor Atreos asked, looking around the room.

“I will be his second”, Bellerophon said, standing up.

“So, be it, and for the others?” Asked Bellerophon’s father, pressing his hands behind his back, his back straight and his brown eyes scanning the Great Hall like a hawk, a very serious hawk.

Only one more Sixth boy year stood up, quite unsure of his decision. “I will be Amalia Kitrinou’s second, sir.” The fifth-year girl seemed happier now she’d have an older boy as her second.

“No one else?” Professor Atreos’s voice seemed disappointed. “Very well then, Professor Artemis Xenia and I will be seconds for Xenophon Pefkos and Gabriel Dukas.” Felix saw the two Sixth-year boys smirk contently.

“I’d not smile if I were you, boys.” Professor Atreos told them. “Whereas a Défteros closer to your age would be able to help you more and walk the Path with you, Professors cannot, and will aid you only if your life is in mortal peril and where it might be absolutely required, but expect us not to perform spells a student would not know or transform you into an animal or aid you in any Professor-like way. We are your seconds because no other student of this School found the courage to do so, we are not boons, we are requirement.” He paused for a moment, letting it sink in. “Now, with this out of the way, Lavarophóroi please take your Houses to your Common rooms.”

“And now we get to spend a year where people gossip us and then at the end we will probably die…”, Bellerophon joked dryly.

“Then this year will be no different than many others, for me. I’m used to this stuff”, Felix shrugged.

“You are more drama than Hellenic Tragedy”, Bellerophon scoffed.

“And you can be a judgmental asshole”, Felix fired back.

“He’s not been here for a week and he’s figured you out”, a girl to their right said. Felix turned his head to see her in her Elysion’s robes, tall with long, curly brown hair with reddish hues and a pair of green eyes with lean cheekbones.

“You’ve met my parents right? Mr. Archon-discipline-is-everything and Mrs. “You are the descendant of warriors and sages, act like it!”” Bellerophon exasperated as they exited the Great Hall, heading to the tricastle and the dorm towers.

Moonlight entered through the bridge’s stained-glass windows giving it an almost blue feeling. “You are not Cillian Gaunt’s son. I don’t know your parents, but they can’t be worse than having him as a father”, Felix told him, looking outside at the calm sea reflecting the Moon’s silver trail, his hands in his robe’s pockets.

“True”, Bellerophon relented. “Azrail and Dreogan whatever his name was sure had a psychopath for a father. Azrail became him and the other guy became wanted.” Felix missed a step, his face painted silver-blue from the stained-glass’ reflecting the moon’s light.

“Wanted?” He asked with as much indifference as he could muster.

“There are those amongst the Hellenic Wizarding society who believe if “we” apprehend Cillian’s youngest and trial him for his family’s crimes, we can force Azrail and Ernaline to come and rescue him, then they can be ambushed and killed”, Lydia tried to explain without bursting in laughter at the preposterousness of it.

“My father disagrees with that opinion rather strongly”, Bellerophon added, and resumed walking.

“Your father’s a wise man”, Felix resumed walking as well.

“Whatever the case, before the Ministry’s destruction Dreogan had a bounty on his head for ten thousand Galleons, not that there ever was a possibility anyone would get him wherever his father had him hidden”, Bellerophon shrugged stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Hidden in plain sight, I sort of knew him. We were together in Hogwarts, same House as well”, Felix added unsure of if he cared if anyone knew who he was.

“For real? What is he like?” Bellerophon’s eyes bulged out in surprise.

“He was a boy like anyone else, he had his dreams and hopes, he loved his friends and mother and hated his father and siblings. He wanted to be liked by others even if he denied it and he liked helping people against bullies”, Felix’s voice stayed even and low, gazing at the enchanted suits of armour, now looking creepy floating in half darkness.

“What happened?” Lydia asked with some interest.

“Azrail and Ernaline gave him hope and then reaped it from him. Now they think him dead, I think.” Felix sped up his pace.

“And is he? Dead I mean?” Bellerophon asked, but Felix answered not until they had climbed the stairs to the Wonderers common room.

“I don’t know, he must be devastated. And now I’m tired, goodnight.”

“Good night, Felix Burton.” Lydia leaned in giving him a kiss on his right cheek, her perfume smelled of orange blossoms and her lips felt smooth and moist against his skin.

She left for the girls’ dorms, with a turn of her head behind her shoulder, her green eyes sparkling, her rosy cheeks following her lips as they curved in a smile.

Felix followed Bellerophon to their dorm room.

“Yo, you must be the British kid, welcome to the Wonderers, I’m Romános Helióspartos, I hope Bellerophon’s treating you well? He can be…a tad too much!” An average height and weight boy with frizzy brown hair and amber eyes told Felix with a mischievous smirk.

“Have friends they said…”, Bellerophon chuckled, rolling his hazel eyes before shaking Romanos’ hand, but in a slightly different variation to the handshake Felix knew. Instead of shaking each other’s palms, they grasped each other’s forearms close to the elbow tight before bringing their torsos closer together for a moment.

“He is my best friend, but he can still be a tad too much, and he never takes teasing well, which just makes it funnier”, Romanos explained, ducking to avoid a clout from Bellerophon.

“Μαλάκα!” Bellerophon chased him around the room.

“While them two chase each other around like little boys, I am Trianós Oneiropólos and one day I’ll be a famous painter of the wizarding world, you have nice geometry in your head’s proportions.” Felix shook the hand of a boy taller than he was with black hair reaching down to his ankles and various piercings along his face’s left side from his chin all the way up to his ear, some connecting with silver chains. His cyan-hued eyes gazed at him intently.

“Nice to meet you”, Felix replied taking in Trianos’ appearance. “And uhm, thanks I guess?”

“If you think I’m weird, that’s okay, everyone does, and I like me so…” Trianos shrugged.

“I think weird is good. No one weird ever went wrong. I’m Gabreél Agathothámnos.”, another boy said walking over from his bed. Bellerophon and Romanos were now play-wrestling.

“Weird is better than stereotypical”, Replied Felix turning to the new boy. He was short and round with a baby face and black eyes with shaven hair and a tuft of hair at the top of his head.

“Good answer, you’ll like Socrates, if you think we are weird, he takes the cake”, Trianos replied with a smirk.

“And these three are Heráklitos Marianídes, Giánnis Georgianós and Aléxandros Serafím”, Gabreél introduced the remaining boys of their dorm room.

“I like potions and magical creatures, I wish I can ride a chimera once”, Giannis said shaking Felix’s hand, bright blue eyes looking at him with a mischievous grin below his fiery blond hair, standing a hair’s width shorter than Felix.

“You and your creatures, I wish our parents had sent us two days earlier rather than now, fear helps nothing”, Alexandros replied him nodding at Felix who nodded back. His bronze-white complexion intensified his blue eyes and blond-highlighted wavy black hair, and by his moustache fuzz Felix guessed he was an early bloomer.

“Hello”, Heraklitos shook Felix’s hand, staring him with intense brown eyes, short black hair, and a pointy chin. What he lacked in height he more than made up for with muscle toning, at least for one barely into teenagerhood. “I don’t talk much, but you are family now, so anyone messes with you, let me know. We protect our own in this House.”

“Thanks…”, Felix ‘s voice trailed as Heraklitos turned around and lay on his bed, not waiting for an answer.

“Goodnight”, Felix said, lying on his bed. He was asleep within seconds.

Herbology was their first class for the year. Groggily Felix walked to the classroom along with Romanos and the others from his dorm.

Panting from the ascend to the top of the Herbology tower, they entered the classroom, rising from the stairs in the center of the room, the balusters transforming from metal to a light brown wood, carved to resemble vine stems and leaves. Some Hundred different species of plants, flowers and herbs hang from pots on a three stories high ceiling, draping all around them as wide, parabolic arched windows allowed light in all around the chamber. “Welcome to the hanging garden of Elysion”, Bellerophon gave him a pat on his shoulder as he walked over to one of the rectangular shaped soil work benches. Touching the walls of the chamber, grape vines rose from below the floor, from rhombus-shaped holes in the marble tiles. The vines hugged the parabolic arches covering the walls.

“How can they be in bloom, when we’re in early autumn?” Felix asked, seeing the grape vines flowering.

“There’s a spell which keeps the classroom’s climate in whichever season the Professor requires, and the plants are magically enchanted to follow the seasons even if they change every second, which they never do”, Bellerophon explained. “There’s four classrooms like this one, one top of the other, first and second years are at the bottom of the tower, then three to sixth years are above them, seventh years study the deadliest, weirdest plants in a separate room, and there’s an aquatic plants classroom below the surface.”

“Way cool, but I see only ten soil work benches? How or where are the rest of the plants accessible from?” Bellerophon gave a smirk before taking hold of his wand and pointing it at the pots at the top of the ceiling.

“Descendo”, Bellerophon called out making the pot, full of day-blooming Arabian jasmine shrubs hover down to their eye level. “They’re not ten, they are over five hundred in this room alone”, Bellerophon grinned.

Just then the Professor, a young, bold man entered the classroom. Bellerophon ascended the pot back to its place on the ceiling.

“For those of you who don’t know me, I am Petros Bounosfagéas”, Felix noted how his amber eyes seemed vacant. “Mr. Whatever your name is, yes, I have a scar going across my face from left eyebrow to right part of my chin, given to me by Bloodfang. Now, if you would not mind not staring at me we can proceed to my lesson. I will teach my lesson in Hellenika and Mentors can help, or not. I expect nothing short of excellence so do try to keep up”, he said in Hellenika.

“No, not during my class. You are here to learn, not translate, Mr. Atreos. After class do what you will”, he said in English as Bellerophon started translating to Felix.

Felix took his parchment rolls and quill out and started taking notes, not an easy feat when you can’t understand the language as he soon found out.

“Wanker”, Felix stated, exiting the classroom an hour later.

“Professor Bounosfagéas is no one’s favourite and it’s everyone’s guess how to get good marks from him”, Bellerophon replied as they descended the stairs.

“Call it what it is, he’s an asshole.” A boy about a head taller than either of them caught up to them climbing down the stairs, with a head full of frizzy curly black hair and green eyes full of mischief. “And you must be one of the Brits with the exchange program”, he asserted passing a hand around each of their shoulders.

“Marios my man!” Bellerophon exclaimed. “Marios meet Felix, Felix needs cheering up”, Bellerophon told Marios, while they descended the spiral, granite stairs, passing the other classrooms Bellerophon had mentioned previously, plus some more for other school subjects.

“Please to meet you, I don’t need cheering up…”, Felix replied, hands in his pockets, eyes looking forward.

“If you say you don’t, you do. Bellerophon, are you going to try out for the Quidditch team?” Asked Marios. “I’d try out if I was you, it’s good exercise and girls dig it. It’s been nice since I joined the Olympians’ team”, he gave a sly smile.

“You and girls…you started way too early…”, Bellerophon sighed. “I’d try out, but there’s no way my ass of a cousin will let me join, no matter how good I may or may not be.”

“Can I try?” Felix asked, his voice actually displaying some emotion, his eyebrow raised as he turned to look Bellerophon at his left.

“Sure, I guess. Have you played before in Hogwarts?”

“Beater and Captain.”

“Oh, that’s cool”, Lydia replied catching up to them, at the base of the tower.

“Beaters require muscles”, Bellerophon whined.

“You’ve got muscles enough and so do I, it’s a ball not a face”, Felix shrugged a reply.

“A fourth year made team captain? How desperate was your House?” Came an arrogant voice behind them as they exited the tower to the bridge.

“Speak of the devil, the asshole. Hello Adrian”, Bellerophon sneered, the older boy seemed to act as if he wasn’t even there.

Felix pivoted on his heels, “Honour and loyalty to one’s House…since when is that despair?” He replied the older boy.

“Did you even win a game? I doubt it”, Adrian crossed his hands in front of his broad chest, his hazel eyes slanting together.

Felix removed a picture from one of his pockets flipping it around for Adrian and the others to see, one of him with the team holding the Quidditch cup, yelling and laughing. “Won the cup on my first year as captain. How many times have you won the cup so far?”

“Well, the team was in shambles when I made…”, Adrian started saying, defensively, when Bellerophon laughed, interrupting him.

“Is in shambles he means, and that’d be none, he’s not won a single game.”

“Yeah, thought so”, Felix stated without adding emotion to his voice.

“Oh, I like him, we’re friends now”, Marios laughed seeing Adrian leaving, hands clenched in fists by his sides.

“You don’t want that, my friends have a tendency of being murdered”, Felix started walking across the bridge towards the Potions tower.

“Not by you, I hope?” Marios’ lips curved to a smirk.

“No, but…”

“All settled, then.” Lydia, Marios and Bellerophon replied simultaneously, grinning wide.

“You think we can add Euredeke and Socrates to our new gang?” Bellerophon asked Lydia.

“My twin brother? Who knows…his mind works different than most”,

“And Euredeke?” Marios asked next.

“Oh yeah, she has a thing for depressed guys”, Lydia chuckled.

“Huh? I’m not depressed, I’m grieving in silent despair”, Felix replied as they made their way across the bridge to the Potions tower. The Potions tower had been completely rebuilt after the second world war and Elysion’s third destruction and was one of the newest buildings. It was the only tower or building in the school not either a circle or a rectagonal in shape. It was in fact a hexagonal with square windows and no arches.

“Yeah, she’ll like him”, Lydia stated with an emphatic nod of her head.

“Do any of you like spending time in the Library? If my marks are not to fail I’ll have to study twice as hard, if Professors are not going to either give lectures in English or allow for translations…or I may have to get creative”, Felix asked, stepping in the hexagonal tower.

“Wait, what?” Lydia seemed genuinely surprised. “A boy who likes spending time in the library, willingly? Are you well or do you have a fever or something?” She pressed her hand against his forehead, teasing him.

“It’s not that we don’t like the library, it’s that we prefer not studying. Move the Quidditch pitch in the library and we’ll like it more”, Bellerophon laughed.

“Boys…seriously…”, Lydia rolled her eyes.

“You must meet Claudia”, Felix replied, climbing the stairs to the fourth-year Potions classroom.

The Potions classroom was a dark lit, shadowed, trigonal room with thick curtains blocking out the sun and few torches providing earthly-coloured light. There were a few work benches with cauldrons and various potions related tools on them, each with seven high stools around it.

Professor Nikolaos Oraioskólikas, a dwarf of a man with thick black hair and beard falling down the sides of his face and head curling around his full red lips and outwards curved nose, did not lecture in English but he also did not prevent Bellerophon from translating to Felix either.

What Felix found fascinating was all the different potions or different ingredients to same potions he knew from his first three years in Hogwarts, which made sense to him as Elysion and Hellada’s countryside had same and different ingredients to Hogwarts. “A good example of this”, Felix wrote in his notes, “is the wit-sharpening potion. In Hogwarts we learn to brew it with three key ingredients; Ground scarab beetles, cut ginger roots and Armadillo bile, in Elysion they use local beetles, cut cardamom roots and the bile of a sand-growing-fern-eating wild goat from the Northwestern parts of Epirus. The result is similar to the potion learned in Hogwarts, somewhat saltier in taste and thicker in texture with mildly more powerful a result.”

Felix noted the only other student who seemed as interested as he was, was the boy he had met in the Wonderers common room, on his first day in Elysion. He wrote down extensive notes, barraged the Professor with questions and follow up questions and made several experiments in his cauldron. Felix found it interesting, how he would start most of his sentences with either “I wonder…” or framing a question in a question.

Their next, and final for the day, class was Transfiguration, in the Transfiguration tower at the castle’s opposite side.

Professor Xenia’ lecture had them learn the theory of Cross-Species Switches. Her playful, yet strict demeanor, and animated expressions and body language helped the lecture’s flow and allowed it not to become stale or boring even with all of the information they had to note down, as her tall stature, crimson long hair and green eyes made her look like some mythical woman-creature.

After the class’s end Felix and Bellerophon headed to the Quidditch pitch, above the waves, for the trials.

It was a peculiar emotion for Felix, having to fly above the sea instead of solid ground, mounted on his Elysion broom.

The Quidditch pitch, as Felix had seen it from the Astronomy tower on his first day, was higher than even the Astronomy tower, and the spectators tower stands floated there as if their bases should be touching the sea below them but had somehow been detached violently from their base, wooden planks and cotton sheets played along the breeze giving it an eerie feeling, while the goal hoops floated with their metal poles looking as if someone had taken a chainsaw to them at their base.

“Everyone here for the tryouts?” Adrian looked as if he didn’t want to be there, under the afternoon sun. Felix couldn’t blame him it was the perfect weather for a stroll on the school’s grounds. Sunny and breezy, neither too warm nor cold, with only the occasional cloud in a sky of hues of blue.

“Good, the team needs a seeker, a beater and a goalkeeper. I’ll give you some maneuvers and tasks to complete and decide which three I’ll get from you and the rest can try again next year”, Adrian told them before he began telling them what he wanted from them, barrel roll, dives, starfish maneuver, he had tasks for speed, goalkeeping, chasing and beating the Bludger.

An hour later, sweating, they headed back to the Broom landing in the Charms tower.

“Adrian does not select his teammates based on merit and skill, does he?”

“No, he loves his sycophants. I’m not surprised I did not make the team.”

“He should have picked you for his keeper, you’d be good at it I think. And what is he thinking making me seeker?”

“Ah, but there’s your fault regarding him, thinking is not something he does readily, easily or willingly”, Bellerophon wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“Or knowingly”, Felix added, making Bellerophon scoff.

Bellerophon’s father and Elysion’s Archon, Professor Atreos was waiting for them on the broom landing. “Bellerophon, Felix, come with me”, leaving behind the others they followed him through the school and up to his office guarded by three stone sphynxes sitting on their hind legs, one for each of the Houses’ towers.

“Pliméni saúra”, Professor Atreos gave the password in a clear, commanding voice. Felix saw the sphynx stand up on all fours and walk to the side and back in position after all three of them had stepped inside the ascending corridor to his office and living quarters within the school.

“Washed lizard? Funny”, Bellerophon commented without a smile or laughter.

“Would you have guessed it?” Aristides looked rather pleased with himself.

“How does the Archon’s tower stand up and not plummet to the tricastle below?” Felix wondered aloud, taking timid steps on the inclined bridge.

“Three sets of parabolic arches one on top of the other keep it afloat, the third smallest and most angled ones create the bases for the bridges from the three Dorm towers”, Bellerophon explained.

“The architecture of this place is…fascinating to say the least”, Felix replied looking outside one of the glazed windows and below, the columns connecting and supporting the lowest arch were shaped and carved to resemble olive tree trunks, the second were shaped after sea waves and the third gusts of wind, and coloured similarly.

Felix entered a spacious, red-bricked, spherical room with a four-sections library crawling on the wall suspended on stone and metal tree-branches for bookshelves, next to it on the one side was the Archon’s desk and a telescope on the other side. The tree branches extended and intertwined all the way to the top of the parabolic arched dome chamber. A jellyfish-shaped chandelier floated above their heads on the ceiling, its many tentacles providing light as it moved between the bookshelves-branches, as if carried by the sea’s currents.

Next to the telescope there were some arm chairs a table and a sofa where other students waited standing or seated.

On the other side of the Archon’s desk a spiral of metal flight of stairs went above and below the chamber.

Felix saw a circular, metal font-bowl in the room’s center suspended on four legs twisting around each other before opening up to receive the font. A leg was carved as a horse hoof, the second was like a spear-head, the third was like an oar and the forth was that of an upturned she shell.

Inside the bowl was filled with a mysterious-looking murky silver liquid, reflecting the ceiling above it.

“You all will attempt the Charon’s path this year. Because of some...unique circumstances this year the Oracle’s trials won’t be conducted before your exams but rather before Easter break, on April. This means you will have less time to prepare, both physically and mentally. Write this down; the Oracle’s Trials are three. The Trial of Endurance, the Trial of Perception and the Trial of Understanding.

“Your défteros or second is not there to aid you in any way magical, they are there for company, to strengthen bonds of friendship and to carry you back should you fall in the path. They can help you with knowledge, but they cannot cast spells. They can see the path, but they cannot walk it for you, nor should they. This school possesses all of the knowledge required for you to survive the Trials, reach Acheron’s springs and the Acherontion, the Necromancer Oracle, and get your Prophesy whatever that may be, if the Oracle’s apperception will give you one.

“The first Trial will finish last and although it will be the easiest one to discern, nature should never be underestimated. I want to wish you all good luck in the Charon’s path and the Oracle’s Trials and have a piece of advice to give you. Luck is the residue of design and an ephemeral lover, one moment she favours the next she destroys. You are dismissed.”

Felix finished writing down what he thought important and placing quill and parchment in his backpack he made to leave with the others.

“Bellerophon, stay please”, his father told him.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Felix walked fast to an empty room in the Wonderers’ tower and transformed to his eagle form where after he flew outside one of the Archon’s office windows, sitting on a perch.

Bellerophon waited until the last student was out and the room was empty. “Yes, father?”

“It’s your brother’s birthday next week”, Aristides sat on one of the armchairs, while Bellerophon stood.

“I know, I’m never allowed to forget it, or mourn him”, Bellerophon replied, irritably. Felix knew he was trying to provoke a reason to unleash and yell at his father.

“Your mother was asking if you would visit his tomb”, Aristides’ face showed no anger, only remorse and sorrow.

“If I do, will you both let me move on? You know I will never become a Polemofágos like him.”

“I have lost a child and my wife to this, whatever…expectation I might have had of you becoming a Polemofágos is long gone. All I wish is for you to move on and to forgive me. I am not going to force you to do this, Bellerophon.”

“Then, my answer is no”, Bellerophon walked to the office’s entrance leading to the Wonderers’ tower bridge. “Can you forgive yourself?” Aristides gave him no reply averting his head.

“No, I didn’t think so. I will do my duty to my family, if you can’t kill her, then I will. But I cannot visit his grave….not yet”, Bellerophon left.

Aristides lowered his face, looking gloom. “We are not the ones preventing you from grieving, my son. How are you to move on when you won’t even allow yourself to face it?”

Felix flew back to the empty room, changing back to his human form. “It’s not perfect yet, needs tweaking, but I understand more now…I can make this work, just need more tweaking”, he mumbled to himself.


	4. Chapter 4:  Forms of Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4: Forms of Magic

Felix twisted in his sleep, covers thrown off his body. In his dream he was in a cave, dark, moist and foreboding, torches and little sunlight illuminating it. A stage of marble stood in the far side surrounded by tripods burning incense in blue flames, and on it a woman, young and beautiful with long, curly, black hair falling on her bronze skin danced in a semi-diaphanous silver-threaded tunic, folding over her body’s ample curvature.

To the left and right of the stage, coming from cracks below the cave’s floor, noxious fumes rose.

He stood in the cave’s watery floor, feeling cold and alone.

He felt enthralled by the strange, half naked woman dancing before him, yet also he was possessed by an intense desire to run away.

The woman fell on her knees, the tunic falling from her right shoulder, hands supporting her weight against the cold surface of the marble stage.

Breathing heavy she lifted her face, piercing blue eyes staring him deeply. She extended her right arm out bringing it towards her, inviting him towards her. He didn’t want to go, every fiber of his being wanted to run away, yet he took a step then another. “Child, you who have forfeited, you who have drunk. If you choose to come to me, you will face self-proclaimed death. Prophesies are a multi-faceted prism of perception. will you change the world, or doom it?” She told him in a honeyed voice, the light diminishing around them.

“Hey, wake up! You okay?” Felix woke up to Bellerophon’s voice, being stirred by his shoulders.

“Humph…yes what, why?” His eyes blinked rapidly, his brain desiring sleep.

“You were twisting violently, sweating and mumbling in your sleep”, Bellerophon explained, but Felix was already asleep again.

The morning after marked his first month in Elysion.

“I’ve been having these dreams for a while now. I never know why I see them or what they mean”, Felix told his friends. They sat in the Wonderers table in the Great Hall under the rising sun gleaming through the clear glass dome.

“Do you understand and not know it, I wonder, or is it you don’t understand and not know it?” Socrates asked no one in particular.

“I don’t wonder why your only friends are two void, vacant teens, one really angry and rebellious teen and a girl who either has no fucking idea whatsoever she’s doing with four highly dysfunctional teens on a road straight for Azkaban or she’s keeping notes ‘cause she’s decided to become one hell of a magicomedian and is gathering material”, Felix replied dryly, with half a mouthful of cereal and milk, hunched over his bowl.

“You bastard, you answered a question with a complex question!” Socrates seemed uninsulted by Felix’s attempt at sarcasm.

“A simple question is boring”, Euredeke replied with a shrug. Her lips dyed black, matching her eyes and straight, thin hair and black-shaded makeup.

“Ray of sunshine, you are”, Bellerophon snorted, swallowing from his jug of coffee.

“Not trying to be, I am dressed in all black to avoid giving people misleading messages I like the nuclear fusion ball of misery above our heads. If I could transform our school robes into black, I would have”, Euredeke rested her head in her left hand, looking bored with life.

“You are quite pleasantly dreadful”, Lydia told her, with a smile.

“Thank you.”

“A multi-faceted prism of perception”, Socrates contemplated what Felix had told them of his last night’s dream. “I think we are missing information it doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of it.”

“Come on, we’ll miss the ship to Atali. Socrates, you can think on it on the way”, Bellerophon downed the contents of his mug and with a hurried motion tried to stuff as much as he could of his breakfast’s remnants in his mouth whilst standing up.

“The Kymopoleia is not to set sail for another hour, we have time”, Socrates said, not wanting to stand up yet.

“We won’t get good spots on the deck.”

“Come on brother, you know he won’t quiet down until he’s in the ship”, Lydia rolled her eyes.

They walked to the crescent-shaped port’s docks. Elysion’s caretaker, a hunchbacked old man with long white beard and a bald head tried to have the students enter the seventeen hundreds era frigate in an orderly fashion. Without the Charms and Herbology Professors’ aiding him he’d have failed spectacularly as the streams of impatient teenagers threatened to spill them over in the sea as they elbowed and pushed and tried to enter the frigate through its gangplank with the roped metal balusters.

As they approached her, Felix saw the Kymopoleia had a total length of around sixty meters from the bowsprit’s tip to aft-end, three masts of square and trigonal sails and an elevated rear deck where the helm was. She was painted after the school’s colours, her hull painted in stripes of blue and red, while her masts were dyed green and her sails white. Below the bowsprit a female figure ending in an octopus’ eight legs roared, holding a brass trident.

“Come on, let’s go grab some seats by the bowsprit”, Bellerophon looked behind his shoulder, leading them starboard side. “Here we can have a great view, and shade from the masts and sails. Perfection.”

When all of the students and Professors were all aboard the captain and first officer started waving their wands around bringing the ship to life. Sails were lowered and the ropes tying the frigate to the port pulled on the main deck, the anchor raised, and the helm begun to rotate.

Ithake was a smidge on the horizon, some fifteen minutes later when the captain licked his wrist and the frigate gained an unnatural speed and momentum. Almost an hour later Bellerophon clasped his hands.

“We have made the round of the Peloponnese, prepare to dive!”

“Dive? We are in a ship, if we dive, we’ll sink!” Felix exclaimed, feeling anxious.

“If we were a Mundane sea vessel perhaps.” In response to Bellerophon’s reply, the captain and first officer coordinated their spell-casting producing a blue-cyan bubble that enveloped the frigate. The captain then moved his wand in a downwards motion and the frigate dove into the Aegean.

“Let’s go, in ten minutes we’ll be in Atali, under the waves”, Felix followed Bellerophon to the gangplank, taking note of how despite them being almost vertical gravity, and the laws of physics did not react as they should. He walked as if he was still level with the sea’s surface.

“This is some spell, we are behaving as if we are still leveled with the surface, the sea is not drowning us and we can breathe, sea and talk normal.”

“It’s a compound spell, meaning many different spells making up one different cohesive spell, one spell for being able to keep the sea back, one to filter air in and out of the bubble, one to defy perception and gravity and make it as if the ship is always levelled and so on. Individually each spell is only good for one thing, when combined in a certain way, they make this. And the spell is powered by the sea water and the friction between it and the bubble instead of the wizards who created it”, Lydia explained.

A similar blue bubble started to appear in the distance, hinged in the sea bottom. “Atali, city below the waves. Here the spell is also crystalized to resemble glass”, Socrates pointed at it with awe in his voice. “And our home, we are between Krete and Keithera, in a sub-surface valley known to the Wizarding world as “Hephaistos’s Cradle””

“Amazing…” Felix saw the underwater city come ever closer as the frigate started to level again. The city was built on several levels or terraces along a submerged cliff. The top of the city at the cliff’s peak stood fifteen meters under the surface whereas the center of the town and square lay fifty meters beneath the waves. The cliffs surrounded a small valley with two marine canyons at either end.

“Mundanes believe it to have sunk under Santorini, the truth is a bit more…elaborate than that. Thousands of years ago our ancient wizarding ancestors saw the volcano’s eruption coming and rather than lose the city they decided to uproot it and “transfer” it here, eventually as sea levels rose, more and more of the city became enveloped in the protective crystalized barrier spell”, Lydia explained. “The frigate approaches the port as they used to when its port used to be above the sea. Only now it has to go through one of the underwater canyons to dock, making the experience somewhat…otherworldly. The higher you rise the more “recent” the buildings are, although the newest ones are from back when Byzantium ruled, ever since then few changes have been made here.”

“So, children born here live their whole lives under the sea?” Felix asked, feeling awestruck.

“Other than the seven years in Elysion, yeah mostly. We are children of the sea, even more so than the rest of Hellenes.” Lydia prepared to disembark as the Kymopoleia docked in one of the wood and stone docks and the first officer brought down the protective barrier spell around it.

Ten minutes later, walking through the fused white and blue houses fused into each other and the cliffside behind them, some with flat roofs, some with ceramic tiles, and internal gardens, they arrived in the town’s central square. Felix gazed up from the slated street, each slate painted white with blue borders and saw the buildings becoming more detached and more medieval with arches near the cliff’s peak, white stairs leading up from the circular square. At the square’s center a five domed church stood, extending past it there were foundations of an older structure “Used to be a temple to Poseidon, since five hundred AD it’s become a Saint Basilius church”, Bellerophon motioned Felix to follow him inside a store.

“So, the buildings around here are from ancient times?” Felix entered the white square building. Inside it he saw it to be a tavern much like Hogsmeade’s three broomsticks. Large rectangular wooden beams supported the store’s second floor and each table could sit twenty or so people with benches and barrels used as chairs. Behind a Γ shaped bar the owner, a forties something muscular man with a long black beard and moustache with short, spikey, black hair and a tall, bulky build. His green eyes scanned everyone who entered or exited his establishment as he cleaned glasses or served clients.

“The Triton’s fart?” Felix read the place’s name aloud. “For real?”

“Yeah…owner’s funny in his no-nonsense way”, Bellerophon chuckled.

“This place is amazing”, Felix “If only I could understand what the various labels and stuff in the menu said, I mean I can comprehend some of it from study of ancient runes, but other are Hellenic to me.”

“They are Hellenic…oh, I see, that was a joke…”, Socrates replied making his sister laugh.

“Bad one”, Felix nodded.

They sat in one of the tables. “Let me order”, Bellerophon ordered some stuff from one of the barmaids. Five minutes later she returned with four pint-sized glasses full of a viscus dark golden concoction smelling of herbs and honey.

Felix picked up his glass and after he and his brought their glasses together he took a sip from the thick liquid. “This thing is excellent!” He announced before swallowing the rest of it in one gulp. “Charles’d loved it. He’d have been amazed at both Elysion and Atali as well.”

“To dead relatives, may we live to exact painful punishment on their murderers!” Bellerophon toasted before drinking his fill and bringing down his glass with a bang on the table.

“It’s non-alcoholic spiced fermented honeymead, and it’s a family recipe”, Socrates told Felix. “We used to drink this stuff for water when we were younger.”

“Oh, look. Fotis entered with his gang”, Euredeke mentioned in her low, bored voice.

“Ignore him, he might be a bully but even he can’t be stupid enough to attempt anything in here”, Bellerophon replied looking less than interested at the seventh-year boy.

Felix saw him approach a sixth-year girl.

“Andronikos would not tolerate that, no”, Socrates said, looking at the man behind the counter.

“Andronikos?” Felix asked, ordering another honeymead. “These things are great too”, he said eating a piece of bread with a white cheese, basil, a tomato slice and olive oil on top.

“Tavern owner, something like twentieth generation Atalian – they can be…moody?- and oh yeah, our father”, Lydia grinned.

Felix was looking at the table with the girl and Fotis, she was obviously not liking his advances.

“You disgust me, leave me alone”, she said aloud.

“Come on now, don’t be…”

“She said to leave her alone”, Felix stood up from his spot on the bench.

The tavern fell silent, Andronikos monitoring the situation, his left hand under the counter, leaning his body on his right hand on it.

“Or what?” Fotis turned around, wand in hand, looking irritated.

“You can’t handle that, just go back to whatever hole you came out of, like a good lil’ boy”, Felix taunted him.

“Who are you calling little, filth? Dep…”, Fotis tried casting Depulso on Felix who acted faster casting Azrail’s punch hex on his lower abdomen region. Fotis let out a howling cry bending over from the pain.

The students in the tavern, including the girl Fotis was pestering cheered “ooohhhhh!”

“British lad one, moron zero. Piscifors”, Andronikos transfigured Fotis into a fish before shoving him in a pipe. “Direct line to Archon’s office. You, British lad, your drinks are on me. Fast draw and unpredictable spell, I like that”, Andronikos gave a nod at the barmaid who brought Felix another honeymead.

“He hasn’t bought drinks anyone ever as far as I know!” Bellerophon exclaimed. “Felix my man!”

“My dad’s told me he did so once before, A Polemofágos came here looking to drown his gilt for losing his soulmate to ambition, before the war. Dad wouldn’t say more though”, Socrates drunk his honeymead.

“To free drinks!” They brought their glasses together to Lydia’s toast.

“How much time do we have, before we have to depart for Elysion?” Felix asked, standing up.

“About three to four hours, more or less”, Bellerophon replied.

“Okay, thanks. I’m going to have a walk, do some shopping for me mum and friends and take some pictures for them. You’ll be here?”

“We will be, indeed”, Socrates nodded.

Felix made to leave the tavern. Bellerophon tried standing up but Lydia restrained him with a hand on his shoulder and a shake of her head.

“You hide your sorrow behind an impregnable wall of anger, sarcasm and judgement for others. He hides his by needing some time alone and by being secretive. Respect that until he is ready to come out of his shadow and support him without critique or judgement. What he needs is a friend and a firm yet constant and gentle nudge. If that’s not something you feel you can do for him, find him a Mentor who can.” She said as Felix exited the establishment.

Bellerophon gave it some thought before replying. “I hate it when you’re right. Nai, I can do that.”

“Well said sis. Where is Marios?”

“You know him, Atali equals flirting and who knows what else…”, Bellerophon rolled his eyes at his friend’s promiscuousness.

“He didn’t waste time, did he? I think I’ll wait some more, boys in Elysion improve with time, I hope”, Lydia replied, drinking her honeymead.

“We’re not all that bad.”

“No, not bad. Just immature, unsophisticated teens”, Lydia shrugged with an innocent smirk.

“Is it maturity and sophistication you seek, I wonder, or is it someone to equilibrify your immaturity and insecurity?”

“There, that’s Hellenikí tragedy for you. The most mature and sophisticated boy in Elysium, and he’s your brother”, Bellerophon laughed, downing some more of the honeymead.

“Don’t you start brother, and I know just my luck. And he’s cute as heck, oh well.”

“I just like to read and explore ideas of the mind”, Socrates shrugged.

“As my father likes to say, “perí pásas nósou kai malakías”” Lydia rolled her eyes as the two boys laughed.

“It astonishes the mind and baffles consciousness, how you can selectively remember some of our ancient language and not all with such profound ease.”

“Remember all of it? Are you crazy Socrates? Waste all that energy?” Bellerophon cracked a grin.

“Truly a clever man, he who conserves energy, but what happens when you need to remember something you’ve conserved energy to not remembering it? The conundrum!”

Bellerophon turned his head to Lydia, trying to remain serious, “please tell me, there was at least some consideration in wasting him when you two were born?”

“Not my brother!” Lydia replied with a mock hurt expression, hugging Socrates close.

“I’m basking in the knowledge I’m the only boy in school she considers mature”, Socrates said, with a satisfied smirk.

“There’s three more years to be mature”, Bellerophon replied.

“Not the only boy, not anymore”, Lydia tried to tease her brother.

“A mystery to be solved! Although, perhaps an easy one.”

“Sometimes I wish you’d be less intelligent…” She pushed him away playfully.

Felix walked slowly up and down the stairs of Atali, taking pictures and marvelling at the various layers of architecture, ancient Hellenic, Roman and medieval Byzantine all mixing in with vaulted archways and cobblestone or slated paveways and buildings in a myriad of different colours combined with windows, clear, frosted, and stained. Various plants in pots decorated each window and interior courtyard or garden, while outside the dome the marine world of the Aegean danced with the sunlight and the motion of the currents casting down playful multicoloured caustics on the town.

After two hours of walking about, purchasing gifts for his friends and family he sat down on one of the top terraces, gazing down the picture-perfect town below the waves.

He took out the photo his mother had taken of him and Charles, last year, hugging outside the Three broomsticks in matching rainbow colour hair and pressed it close to his heart. “I miss you so much, cousin. Why, why can’t I cry? Every time I feel more and more void…it threatens to overpower me, and I just…I just…”, his voice cracked and faded down. “I wish you could be here to see this.”

Felix entered the Triton’s Fart to see Marios with his hand around a girl’s waist talking to Bellerophon.

“Hey! Felix my man! Efterpi, Felix. Felix, Efterpi”, Marios introduced them.

“Oh, you’re one of the exchange program students from England! I’m thinking of joining up next year”, Efterpi said.

“Sounds good”, Felix nodded.

“Oh, I like your accent”, she said in an almost swoon-voice.

“What accent?” Felix corked an eyebrow.

“The way you speak, it’s very British.”

“Uhm…I am from there?”

“I know, so exotic…”

“Then again, we girls can also be…girls…”, Lydia facepalmed making them laugh, except Felix. They continued talking and drinking until it was time to depart for Elysion.

The day after, a sunny, breezy Autumn Sunday, Felix and Bellerophon were walking around the School’s grounds when something caught Felix’s attention.

“What’s your father doing?” He pointed to the man, naked from the waist up. He was performing martial arts movements which closely resembled something Felix had seen in Charles’ home in the holovision. Charles had called it Tai Chi. Only Aristides’ movements also produced colourful light shapes. As they walked closer Felix saw they weren’t just shapes. Aristides’ body was covered from head to toe with tattoos, as he moved his body, hands and legs each different tattoo produced a different coloured spell which extruded from his body, originating in the tattoo as it glowed stronger before the spell was ejected outwards. A running wolf, a shooting acorn, a stream of purple flames.

“How does this work? I’ve never seen anything like it”, Felix asked, sitting cross-legged on the soft, green grass.

“It’s called pictomagicology, and it comes from ancient Egypt and then from Ancient Hellada. It is the application of magic using the tattoos on the body as a medium instead of a wand. Each tattoo is a word, an item, spell, part of spell, animal, element and so on. It’s basically like having a pictorial alphabet on your body and depending on which tattoos you pick, and in which order you can produce different spells to be cast. And depending on how advanced you become you can also combined that with wand spells or cast the pictomagic through your wand for enhanced power. Like focusing a light beam through glass magnifying lenses.”

“Interesting, how difficult is it to learn it?” Felix kept his eyes on Aristides as an ice wolf jumped out of his back running on the grass freezing it over before dissipating into thin air.

“A lifetime or two”, Bellerophon said in a low voice, the breeze picking up pace, winter was not far away. “Each tattoo requires careful and lengthy study and arithmancy, transfiguration, charms, curses they all get mixed up after a point so a mistake can be…calamitous for you and others.”

“Fascinating”, Felix whispered back, the breeze making him shiver.

“Then you can also add Panmagikon to the mix…” Felix was too enthralled to ask what that was, as Aristides’ magic display became more and more intense.

~

A day later, they followed the Professor from the Divination classroom in the Astronomy tower to the Library for their first lesson of the day.

The Divination Professor paused just outside the Library’s entrance. “Today we will conduct our lesson in the Acherontion Archives, in the Library. I expect everyone to be quiet, civil and to touch nothing unless told so. The archives are ancient and fragile, damaging them will make you wish for expulsion”, she told them with beady amber eyes looking at them behind silver spectacles and a bonnet of brunette hair.

They walked in the Library after her. After a nod from her the Librarian tapped his wand on the Library’s wall on the seabed cliff in several different patterns, making the light grey megalithic stone blocks vanish.

They stepped in the spacious, dry, low-lit room standing in the center of it.

Felix noted the strands of silk floating below the high-ceiling, with letters glowing in iridescent gold written on them. They appeared to move around the room in a wave-like motion.

On the far end of the hexagon-shaped room there was a one by one-meter wooden frame suspended mid-air, it looked very old with visible signs of wear and tear on its luster.

“The future is not etched in stone…”, Felix whispered under his breath.

“What?” Bellerophon turned his head to him. The megalithic stone blocks reappeared closing them inside.

“Nothing, just remembered something our Divination and Astronomy Professor told us, about seers of old.”

“Do not touch the silk threads, for they are thousands of years old, spread out in the center of the room so you can all see me”, Professor Thimopotamou told them, standing to the right of the wooden frame.

Professor Thimopotamou waited for people to quiet down before starting her lecture. “Acherontion was one of three Major Oracles in Ancient Hellada. One in Delphi, the world’s navel center of the world, from where Apollo spoke to Pythia through his vessel of Helios’ chariot, one in Dodona, speaking for Zeus, with his vessel of thunders, transporter of Olympus, and one in Acherontion, Achronia Pluto’s Oracle, god of the underworld, with the Shadeglass vessel of shades, transporter of the veil.

“Before the Hellenic civilization’s Oracles, Farseers spoke for the Egyptian gods. One for Amun-Ra, pyramidion of light and universal order, one of Hathor, pyramidion of fertility and life everlasting, and one for Osiris, pyramidion of death and the world of the Duat. Before that the Babylonians and the civilization of Ur, first city of man, had their Farseers for gods now long since forgotten and lost.”

“Ma’am where they always three? The Oracles or seers?” Felix asked in English. The Professor was giving her lecture in Hellenic and Bellerophon had been busy keeping notes.

“You understand Hellenic?” Bellerophon looked up surprised.

“I’ve learned a few words, but no, I don’t. I invented a translator spell, doesn’t work well -yet- but I get the gist of it”, Felix shrugged.

“Ten points to the Wonderers, and to answer your question. While these were the most important Oracles of the Ancient Hellenic -and Egyptian- worlds, they were not the only ones. For example, in Mycenean times Attica held a small Oracle of little importance which was left behind in the sands of time. The Lakonians had one in Mount Taygetos and there was one in Libadeia in Boeotia, connected to Chthonian Zeus Trophonius. All of those vanished, and eventually even the three big ones ended as humanity changed and new cultures and empires occupied both Hellenic and Egyptian lands”, Professor Thimopotamou answered him.

“Professor, Ache…róntion’s Oracles wrote in threads of silk, what did the other two write in?” Felix followed up.

“The Oracles of Dodona wrote on oak leaves by burning them with thunder spells and the Oracles of Delphi used sunlight to etch Daphne leaves. Unfortunately, Dodona’s archives were destroyed by the romans and Delphi’s by Azrail when he destroyed the Hellenic Ministry of Magic and its Department of Enigmas.”

Felix noted down her replies, and the lecture continued with them taking notes until the last ten minutes before the class’s end.

“Can anyone tell me why Oracles wrote their verses of Prophesy as they did? In leaves and threads of spider silk?” The Professor asked them, looking left and right for hands.

“What I’d like to know is who is that eagle with white wings flying around school, helping people in distress. It’s an amazing bird!” Bellerophon exclaimed, his question had been for Felix but with the silence it was heard throughout the room.

“As fascinating as this is…”, Professor Thimopotamou was interrupted by a Doriis girl.

“I’ve named him Aethon”, she said with self-confidence.

“The bird sent by Zeus to eat Prometheus’ liver every day? Interesting choice. And Professor, they did so because they knew the future is not etched in stone, and their prophesies were what may or can happen, not what will happen”, Felix replied them both.

“Apparently, I’m not able to maintain order of my classroom today, good answer Mr. Burton/ Twenty points to the Wonderers.

“Elysion is the only school where Divination is a core subject from year three on, so while the rest of you have done this last year, Mr. Burton please walk up to the seer’s eye and touch it with both hands.” Professor Thimopotamou told him, indicating him the wooden frame to her left.

Felix walked up to the seer’s eye, touching it with both hands while the Professor stepped in front of him. “As most of you know the seer’s eye rejects most, reacts with few and…”, she was cut off again, this time by an Olympian’s boy with stunned blue eyes bulging out.

The seer’s eye was vibrating with an otherworldly high-bass sound as the spider-silk threads begun to flow faster as one strand’s ends wrapped themselves around Felix’s wrists, their verses turning from gold to silver and the seer’s eye turned to a crystal-clear mirror.

Felix fell to his knees, seeing images from his past, present and futures. Things he understood, things he did not understand and things he wished he did not understand.

The spider silk threads wrapped around his arms, torso and back burning themselves onto his skin, through his clothes and robes as if they existed not.

“Manipulated, betrayed, taught, destroyed and lost. The Child’s journey shall end after they face the bringer of Death thrice. Where they were taught, after they are destroyed and lost and finally when they have nothing left to lose. When you are ready to meet as equals and lay all burden down will the seed find soil and water and take root. Thus Achronia, Pluto’s Oracle speaks.” A voice emanating from the seer’s eye spoke in a not quite so human voice before the seer’s eye burned up in a wisp of smoke.


	5. Chapter 5:  A Different Kind of Dueling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5: A Different Kind of Dueling

Felix fell to his knees, his hands on his lap, his head tilted over with his hair falling on his face.

“Felix! You okay?” Bellerophon ran to him, lifting his hands to see the silk threads having become black tattoos with only the first part glowing golden.

“D-did anyone see what I saw?” Felix asked, letting Bellerophon help him to his feet.

“I saw nothing in the Seer’s eye, only a mirror, why what did you see?” Bellerophon asked him, curious.

“Ah, well nothing much, just lush fields of wheat and asphodels and streams of clear running water”, Felix replied with half the truth.

“Class dismissed. Mr. Atreos, please help me get Mr. Burton to the Infirmary. Mr. Aetomatis, please fetch me the Archon”, the Professor told them, Bellerophon and a Doriis boy nodded, each going about the task given to them.

Bellerophon and Professor Thimopotamou helped Felix to the Infirmary where Mr. Charilaos Ethelotiflos, Elysion’s nurse, looked him over.

“You seem okay, the potion ointment should help your skin recover from the burns. Come back if you start displaying signs of insanity, you can go”, Felix looked at him trying to discern the amount of humour or sincerity in his voice, in regard to the potential loss of his sanity.

“Mr. Burton, Ms. Thimopotamou, please follow me to my office.” Jumping up from the Infirmary bed Felix put on his shirt and robes before following them to the Archon’s tower, across corridors and up the tricastle’s stairs.

In the Archon’s office Felix stood by the desk, waiting for whatever was to happen, hands by his sides.

“You have a question for your Professor, I believe”, Aristides said leaning against his desk.

“Many, but…no one saw what I saw in the seer’s eye, because none of them have the gift, correct?” Felix turned his gaze to Professor Thimopotamou.

“Correct”, she answered with a grim, fearful look on her visage.

“You have it, though, the gift. You saw in the seer’s eye, I know the look of fear you’ve had since”, Felix replied, feeling unsure of what to do with his hands, for some reason.

She gazed at him in silence for a moment. “I have it, indeed. I had heard people of prophesy see their lives flash before their eyes, I had heard they see the prophesy in images in their mind’s eye…you don’t remember anything before your seventh year of life?”

“Nothing, and now that you know?”

“You are as much his victim as anyone else, how are you not clinically insane after what he’s done to you?” Fear had been replaced by worry.

“I don’t know”, Felix shrugged.

“Archon, if you don’t need me anymore?” She turned her eyes to Aristides after another moment of silence.

Professor Atreos waited for her to leave then sat in one of the armchairs, inviting Felix to do the same with a motion of his hand. Felix sat in one of the armchairs opposite his.

“I have a question of my own, Mr. Burton, or is it Mr. Gaunt?” Professor Atreos said in a calm, concentrated voice.

Felix swallowed hard. “Q-question, sir?” He asked, placing his hands unnerved between his knees.

“What does Bellerophon think of me? Sometimes I think he hates me”, Professor Atreos asked him, trying to conceal the pain in his eyes.

“He doesn’t hate you he loves you, he may be angry at you even if I don’t know why, but he loves you. I think he would want you to show it more instead of always being this strict family-honour-first soldier with no display of affection towards him, even in private”, Felix replied honestly.

“I see, something for me to think about…may I?” Aristides leaned forward, pointing at Felix’s wrists.

Felix leaned forward, extending his hand out to the man, who observed them, turning them over this way and that.

Aristides murmured the prophesy, “it seems, Felix, we are connected in more ways than one…your friendship with my son, your prophesy…is it true the seer’s eye burned up after this?”

“Yes, sir. I’m guessing it is not supposed to do that?” Felix withdrew his hands, looking over the parts glowing golden.

“Yes, and no…it hasn’t done this before, and I don’t think it will again. After the Persians destroyed Acherontion at mesopotamos and stole the Ferryman’s vessel, their real reason for the wars, the last Achronia, Acheron’s seer, Pluto’s Oracle created this object to continue giving us prophesies. It was her final act before dying from mortal wounds. Since then it has continued creating prophesies, connecting older ones to new ones and to the correct people.

“The Oracle’s ghost…may also give out prophesy in Acherontion’s remains, although much less often than before. To most she interprets and guides. I was an exception, one of the few. I entered her sanctuary to see her dancing half naked, her hands…” Felix cut him off.

“…stretched out, inviting you closer to her and her blue eyes…yet you did not know if you wanted to go closer?”

“When I stepped up to her, she placed a hand under my chin, sitting on her knees and spoke to me in a honeyed voice.

“You, son of a long line of Polemofagoi, ambitious and strong in your convictions, you desire much and through hard work,

You will have it all. Polemofagos, Polemarchos, Minister of Magic, Envoy of the Enclave of the Aegean and Taygetos,

You will have it all and you will lose it all to the white Raven. They will claim your tittles and your first born, for to you it will be damnation and to him salvation.

Become Archon of what you hate the most, aid the child twice-born and twice named, Destroyer of the seer’s eye, even if it will be your enemy’s sibling, or lose both your sired seed to the White Raven”

“And it has all come to pass, so far. Soon after my graduation from Elysion, a place I loathed. I became Polemofagos and everything else followed. I married, had a son, and soon after a second one, I became Minister of Magic, Envoy and I thought I had it all, my eldest had graduated and was in his first assignment as Polemofagos himself….I had it all then Cillian and his followers begun stirring trouble, yet your father transformed to a lizard, so I thought…hoped…”

“Azrail, though transforms into a White Raven”, Felix looked down, unable to meet the man’s gaze.

“My eldest wasn’t two days dead and buried when an old friend came to me and asked me to abandon my position as Minister and become Archon of Elysion. She was creating a global coalition of schools against the coming tide.

“I did not even hesitate in my reply and a year later Azrail destroyed all I had worked so hard for throughout my life. So, I will help you Felix, Cillianson, Azrail’s brother, and I will forfeit my life if need be, but I will not lose both my sons”, Aristides raised his Archon’s robe’s sleeves to reveal his wrists covered in the half glowing prophesy-silk covered skin.

“The fates can suck it...”, Felix mumbled, feeling anger rising through the cracks.

“Some believe that to be a hero, one needs to die first. Maybe, then I will be a hero to Bellerophon, and not anathema”, Aristides leaned back against the armchair’s leather back.

“I have not known Bellerophon for long, but I think he would much prefer a living father he can argue with rather than a dead hero he can idolize”, Felix told him, matching his eyes.

“And you? What do you prefer?”

“That not another family is separated because of another Gaunt, and that I am known as Felix Burton Hopeson. I can’t undo who my father is, but he don’t have to define me even after death”, Felix replied with an iron mask of a face.

“You are much different from what I had expected…Felix Burton.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think?”

Looking around Felix saw a suit of armour he had not noticed the previous time. It was in black and red colours, with a breastplate resembling dragon scales above a full plate armour, the gauntlets had similar design on the exterior with a padded leather on the inside, the boots were the same. A cape fell on the back anchored on the Pauldrons. The suit of armour reminded Felix of designs he had seen from the late Byzantine Empire’s Cataphract riders, only the helmet resembled ancient Hellenic hoplite’s helmet, which was rose golden with a lush, long mane reaching the wearer’s waist and lower armour.

“It is something, isn’t it?” Aristides said, following his eyes. “It has been a Polemofagos’ armour for nigh two thousand years now, with some more modern modifications and adaptations along the way. The gauntlets amplify a spell’s magical power, the torso piece has wards and protective spells, the boots can make you run faster, and jump higher. The helmet enhances the senses and reflexes…it has served the Hellenic Magical Government for two thousand years and some change…and this particular set has been in my family for half that time, passing from father to son, or daughter…”

“Then Azrail Death bringer came along and demolished all of it, faster than an eyeblink and for all its usefulness it cannot stop the killing curse”, Felix whispered standing up to view the suit from closer up.

“And all the panoply of war was rendered useless…”

“How do you deal with the bottomless pool that is grief?” Felix asked without turning around.

“A difficult question with an impossible answer…I buried it as deep as I could, covered it with a self-righteous sense of authority, which if our first-born’s death didn’t, it demolished my marriage. My wife imploded and Bellerophon turned to anger and judgement.”

“I can’t even cry…may I go, sir?”

Aristides nodded.

“Bellerophon has certainly found his match in suppressed anger”, the man commented after Felix had left.

Felix walked through the stairs and drawbridge to the grounds. He found Bellerophon sitting under one of the olive trees, under a cloudy, rainy weather.

Bellerophon seemed oblivious to the rain, sitting on the tree’s roots, reading a book.

“Καλησπέρα…φίλε…was that okay?” Felix told him, casting a water-repulsion spell he sat down next to Bellerophon.

“Hey, not bad! You’re learning stuff!”

“It’s showering”, Felix stated.

“I like the sound rain makes on the leaves and ground, and the spell prevents me and the book from getting wet”, Bellerophon shrugged.

“I have Quidditch training in a bit, what are they doing over there?” Felix pointed at two seventh-years who seemed to be dueling with swords, yet the swords did not touch one another. “It looks like dueling but they’re holding swords?”

Bellerophon stood up, placing the book in his backpack. “Come with me.”

They walked near the two older students, they were indeed holding swords and shields and were indeed dueling as their wands were placed in hollows inside the swords.

“It’s still dueling as you know it, mostly. The swords are not used anymore to hack or slash, they are hollow on the inside and are used as amplification mediums, magnifying spells’ power. The shields act like an added layer of protection, it’s useful in dueling, yet completely useless against Avada Kedavra…as Azrail proved”, Bellerophon explained as the two students dueled using swords and shields both for offense and defense.

“Physical objects placed in front of you will block it…but yeah…”, Felix’s voice trailed.

“The ancients had developed a martial arts system called pankration. This is called Panmagikon, kinda stupid if you ask me but there you have it.”

“It’s a bit like your father’s Polemofagos’ armour”, Felix said.

“it is, all Wareaters go through extensive and brutal Panmagikon training…much good it did them, or my brother”, Bellerophon clenched his fists.

“Hellenic Ministry of Magic was one of few whose Aurors didn’t die like flies…I think Japan’s and Uganda’s were some of the few other. So, I think it did something. I’m sorry Azrail murdered your brother.”

“Is that what my father told you happened? It’s not a lie but it’s not what happened either.”

“What did happen?”

“Will you tell me what happened with your cousin?” Bellerophon made eye contact.

“He was murdered.”

“Yeah, all of it. Not just the one line”, Bellerophon did not relent.

“I can’t, it hurts too much.”

“You feel a void, right? A bottomless pool of sorrow, so deep and so intense that merely “looking” at it threatens your very existence?” Felix nodded. “It’s not just sorrow.”

“What is it then? Because it scares me far more than Azrail ever has or could.”

“I can’t tell you that, you must find out that one by yourself. The truth is I don’t hate my father for what happened to my brother, I am angry at him and mum for trying to cheer me up after, for trying to rush me, and for not allowing me to work things out.”

“They were only…”, Felix tried to say but was cut off.

“trying to help? I know, and it doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t…”, Felix stayed silent for a moment, “and how can I find out? I have no one to talk to.”

“You have friends, back in England and in here. You have a family. You can talk to us and I will listen if no one else will, but I won’t tell you of my conclusion, until you have reached yours. If you never decide to ripple the pond’s surface you won’t find out, I can tell you that much”, Bellerophon countered him.

“And if monsters lie underneath?”

“Then you’ll meet them head on and if need be fight them. Know this though when they bite. They are all in your mind and can’t hurt you, not really, even in the wizarding world”, Bellerophon tried to assuage him.

“Feels like a Felix-ending monster to me…”

“How’s it working out for you, not talking about it or upsetting it?” Bellerophon nudged him on.

“If I tell you, will you tell me?”

“What I can, aye.”

“I’m not the only one learning foreign language’s idiots and words, I see”, Bellerophon chuckled.

“Thank you…I better go, or I’ll be late for Quidditch practice.”

“Second game of the season and we lost the first one against the Olympians, what do you think of my cousin?” Bellerophon tried not to roll his eye, his opinion of his cousin apparent.

“If his ego would allow him, he could be a good captain, but god he’s dense! We would have won that game if he had protected the chasers’ flanks…and I did not appreciate having to have my left arm’s bones mended, that hurt!”

“He’s what we call a…” Felix interrupted him.

“Wanker? Malaka? All applicable.” Felix left Bellerophon laughing behind and left for the brooms’ landing in the Potions tower.

A day later they lost to the Doriis, by twenty to one hundred and fifty, the Doriis team scoring no goal but winning on their seeker catching the Golden Snitch.


	6. Chapter 6:  A Winter’s Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6: A Winter’s Tale

Time seemed to fly swiftly in Elysion, with routine setting in, as daily classes passed by and weeks went by as winter made its presence known with chilling gusts of wind, rain and lower temperatures.

Felix made his way across the school grounds, to where Archon Atreos stood surrounded on one side by four Professors and the students participating in the Charon’s Path on the other side. They were near the mountain’s foot at the far side of the grounds.

Behind Aristides Atreos stood the Potions, Transfiguration and Defense against the Dark arts Professors. In front of him stood the students and all of them wished they could be inside the castle, instead of outside in the gale force winds.

Another two students arrived after Felix, wrapped in overcoats and warm clothes.

“In Charon’s Path you will be faced with three Trials. Each pair of trialee and second will have different starting points along the river and, in theory, one ending point”, Professor Atreos started, with the Defense against the Dark arts Professor taking over.

“The Trial of Endurance will be a constant one from start to finish. Endurance against nature, the elements, wards and protections placed by the ancients…and us, as well as hexes and jinxes. Endurance takes many forms, even in relationships between people”, the DaDa Professor said in his thick, woolen, black coat and scarf wrapped around his neck. His blue eyes looking each and every one of the students present.

“The Trial of Perception will be a constant in your journey to Acheron’s springs. It is a Trial that will test your sense of reality, your senses and your will to progress upriver. Not all that can be sensed is right and not all unsensed are wrong, and animal senses are better than a human’s”, Professor Xenia told them with a quirky smile on her lips, dressed in heavy winter clothes.

“The Trial of understanding is the most challenging of them all. While it will stay with you throughout your lives, it will not be as omnipresent in the Path. Now, as part of your training throughout December, January and February, for two hours every day except for weekends you will run up the mountain and back down again, go.” Professor Atreos told them.

Bellerophon started to run, following his father’s order and some of the Seventh-years in front of them.

“Bellerophon, wait! Why run? It won’t help us build stamina”, Felix called out for him, walking fast, but not running.

“Won’t it in the Path?” Bellerophon panted.

“Endurance not sprint. I’ll be walking…fast”, Felix shrugged his shoulders and started walking, his hands following his body motion, left right, left right.

Fifteen minutes later they were up the small mountain’s peak, bare of vegetation other than shrubs like thyme and rosemary. “Those down there are Muggle houses? They’re not that close in Hogwarts”, Felix pointed at the buildings on the other side of the mountain.

“They are, it’s often the Mundanes there are obliviated. They come up here, see something they shouldn’t and then Ministry officials from the Wizarding-Mundane protection department have to come in and obliviate them…or at least they did up until Azrail destroyed the Ministry. Now it’s my father’s job”, Bellerophon wiped the sweat from his forehead, even in this gale force windy cold ascending five to six hundred meters of mountain side had him sweating.

“Right, and don’t creatures from the grounds go over there? Or the rest of the island?”

“Not as frequently, there’s spells containing them within the grounds, and also the creatures that’ve been chosen for the grounds are creatures which like to stay in a place they’ve nested on or made their territory, so they are less likely to want to emigrate or leave”, Bellerophon answered him. “Beyond the horizon is mainland Hellada, below it to our right is the Peloponnese which you can’t see because of the rest of Ithake island. Behind us is Kephalonia and diagonally to our left is Epirus where in a few months we will go for Charon’s path in Acherontas river.”

“Most of Hellada is mountainous, isn’t it?”

“Naí, with some pockets of fertile valleys.”

They walked down the mountain and then back up again, to see the Professors having left.

“Something stinks about this. I’m going to the library”, Felix announced through the howling wind, leaving for the tricastle entrance rather than go back up the mountain. “And I need a shower first.”

“What? Why?”

“Find literature in Charon’s Path, this sounds more and more like a marathon rather than a sprint, yet they want us to run up and down a cliff?”

‘You think they are lying to us?” Bellerophon raised an eyebrow.

“No, I think the Trials have begun, and the Path will be the conclusion, not the start.” They crossed the orange grove, heading for the drawbridge.

“I’ll come with you”, Bellerophon followed him to their common room and their shared House’s showers, a room dyed blue with artificial, magically created clouds instead of faucets providing water. Changing to a new set of clothes they headed for the Library.

Entering Dome One they found Lydia and Socrates studying Transfiguration.

“Bellerophon, I am mortified now, what are you doing in the Library? Has war begun? Comet falls on us?” Lydia teased him.

“Ha ha ha…no, Felix wants us to research the Charon’s Path”, Bellerophon mocked hurt and insult.

“I wonder what compels you to traverse the Charon’s Path?” Socrates tore his eyes from his notes to look at Felix.

“I wonder where I’ll find some information on it?” Felix deflected.

“You would be better served looking in the School’s Archives”, Socrates seemed unphased by it.

“I’ll go search in those how long could it take?” Bellerophon made Socrates smirk.

“Elysion was founded by Odysseus, Andromeda and Callirrhoe over four thousand years ago. They began writing Elysion’s Chronicles and all Archons since have continued their work, some of them -Archons- on a daily basis. So, my assessment would be more than a while”, Socrates told him, looking back down at his notes.

“You enjoy this far more than you should”, Bellerophon grumbled. “Right, whoever wants free time?” He mumbled under his breath and stepped over the shelves with the Books of Chronicles.

“I don’t understand this”, Bellerophon announced ten minutes later, frustrated.

“Four thousand year all Hellenika? Why would you?”

Felix walked up to him, the light reflecting the sea onto the shelves and books and pointed his wand at the papyrus-leather-bound book Bellerophon was holding. “Expligua.”

“Whoa! I can read it now! Or at least some of it…”, Bellerophon exclaimed a little too loud.

“It’s not perfect, but it’ll do. You can understand the gist of it. Oh, and practice on something that isn’t four thousand years old first. It can have unpleasant results if done…”, Felix was interrupted by a loud bang as Socrates tried casting it on his notes, making them explode in fire.

“Ah well, Charms my nemesis. Potions are better suited to my personality”, announced Socrates while Lydia put out the flames before repairing the damaged textbook pages.

Felix returned to his search for information on the Charon’s Path.

“What are you doing for Christmas break, Felix?” Asked Lydia.

“Nothing, my cousins’ family moved away from Cornwall, under the Fidelius charm and I can’t go back to mum’s, she’s moving to Hogsmeade…so, I’ll likely request from Archon Atreos if I can stay in Elysion, otherwise I’ll have to go to Hogwarts and return after Christmas break”, Felix replied without turning around, he was looking in the wizarding culture section.

“What? No, Christmas is not meant to be spent alone. You will spend it with me and father. I will arrange it”, Bellerophon said, taking his eyes off the Archives’ book for a moment to look over at his friend.

“Okay”, Felix picked up another black leather-bound book, opening it and skimming through it. “Always three…three founders, three Houses, three Trials, always three…”, he voiced his thoughts aloud in whispers.

“Three times four equals twelve, twelve Olympian gods? I like a good mystery!” Announced Socrates, with a gleeful smile, his green eyes sparkling with delight.

“And I like silence in my court of knowledge, scoundrels!” The Librarian’s voice thundered behind them.

“Some learn silently, some learn noisily. The jubilance of knowledge is never quiet”, Socrates tried to maintain a serious voice in his reply to the austere woman with the black shoulder-length hair and wrinkled pale amber eyes.

“Be jubilant elsewhere!” She replied sternly and irritated, with her hands on her waist, her left leg tapping against the floor.

“Seventh-year hex removal, that should come in handy”, Felix said under his breath, closing one book and moving on to another one he continued reading, studying and researching until it was time for dinner and his brain felt like mush.

The next two weeks moved on in similar fashion, although it seemed only Socrates and Felix could concentrate on studying as Christmas approached.

So, two weeks later and after a day and night voyage by sea from Elysion, they arrived at Piraeus. After they disembarked the frigate, they followed Aristides as he walked away from the dock, and inside what seemed like an abandoned factory-turned port, with all heavy machinery removed, the building’s interior re-painted after Elysion’s colours in two successive rooms. The one closer to the dock was for the students and Professors’ waiting room, while the second room was for the parents’ waiting for their kids to arrive or depart. The two rooms were divided not by a wall but by columns and wooden balusters. What were once tall chimneys now provided extra light along with large concave windows on the building’s cement walls.

Exiting the building Aristides pulled a whistle-like object from one of his pockets and pressing it to his lips he blew through it.

Just as Felix was about to comment on no sound coming out of it a powder red taxi appeared out of nowhere, pulling over, breaks screeching as it came to a stop.

“Magoréon ready for service, where to Archon?” A bald man in his fifties asked, with a deep voice, black mustache, and beard, with a hand outside the window.

“Pentélikon 5a”, Aristides replied, as the three of them entered the taxi. Bellerophon and Felix taking the back seats with Aristides sitting next to the driver.

“A million lights…”, Felix whispered under his breath. “Trunks?” He asked looking at Bellerophon.

“They will be taken directly home from the ship’s hold”, Bellerophon replied. “We usually apparate home from the port, but you haven’t seen the joyous messy chaos that is Piraeus and Athens before.”

And a chaotic mess it was, as the taxi sped up and using magic squeezed through narrow alleys, other cars and buildings in a way that defied the laws of nature.

“And that’s Piraeus’ municipal theatre…that’s the main port…that’s a football stadium…the ancient temple is Thesion, or the Temple of Hephaistos, yes that’s the Acropolis, I’ll bring you over one day…that’s the Muggle Government’s Headquarters or the Parliament or otherwise known as a den of thieves and criminals…that’s the music hall…”, Bellerophon continued pointing out the important landmarks as they made their way across the vast urban landscape.

Fifteen minutes later they were pulling over the slopes of mount Penteli to the north east of Athens’ basin, having driven through Piraeus’ convoluted streets to Athens’ car-packed ones and something Felix had not encountered before in his life; traffic jams.

“What’s a half-wizarding neighborhood?” Felix asked, seeing a label by the house.

“Wizard-folk live in it, but it’s near Mundanes and they can drive through it and live near it, so unlike wizard-only villages like Atali you need to be careful when outside with casting spells and so on”, Bellerophon informed him, opening the metal lattice gate to the three storied, crème painted, red-roof-tiles building’s front garden with a footpath leading through it to the main entrance’s wood and glass door.

Aristides pressed a button, once inside, and after a minute he opened a metal door and entered what looked like a vertical rectagonal cabin.

“This is an elevator, right? I’ve heard about them but not been in one before”, Felix entered it after Bellerophon.

“Yeah, goes up and goes down, a very Mundane means of lifting things and people. I prefer moving staircases and unibody motion spells”, Bellerophon replied with a chuckle.

“Uniwhatnow?” Felix raised an eyebrow.

“You know how you stand outside the Great Hall in the corridor in Elysion, move your body to the side and you go upside down and then walk down but up to the Library? That.”

“Ah, cool beans.” The elevator stopped at the third and final floor, they exited to a marble floor corridor with two heavy-looking, wooden doors.

“What is cool is the view outside on the balcony, temple on the rock, Parthenon of the ancients, Acropolis eternal, beacon of…”, Felix interrupted Bellerophon.

“Light?”

“Human’s innate ability to create beyond their heads, overcome obstacles far greater than ourselves and allow our minds to surpass reality and manifest order from chaos, life from death and hope from desolation and despair” Father and son replied simultaneously, entering the apartment. An oval shaped blue coloured living room surrounded by windows with a long glass table and cotton top chairs in one end and a large television set hanging from the ceiling with a π-shaped couch and a glass coffee table in front of it.

“Nice pep talk, and I’m sure the temple is amazing, and neither can save us from…” Bellerophon cut him off.

“Azrail?”

“The Darkness within. Azrail…Azrail used to scare me”, Felix replied, trying to take the new space in.

“Good answer”, Aristides said, turning on the lights.

“Muggle entert…”, Bellerophon started saying, seeing Felix looking at the TV.

“Yeah, I know holovision TV from Charles’ family, interesting way to enjoy evenings”, Felix cut him off, moving to the balcony.

He placed his hands on the glass baluster, to the left of a metal table with three metal chairs.

“Now that is something…”, he said in awe, seeing the acropolis, lit up in the distance, and the distance behind it reflecting the moon.

“There’s a spell placed on the balcony, one of many. It shows the Acropolis as it used to be when it once was. Even in the distance it is…something”, Bellerophon leaned against the balcony’s glass baluster.

“Does it ever go away? The…”, Felix asked a few moments of silence in the cold breeze.

“Anger?”

“Hurt.”

“You learn to live with it, to limit it to the deepest corner of your mind until the pain is dull. The anger…it can go away…somehow”, Bellerophon replied in a low voice.

“I don’t…know. Thank you for having me over for Christmas”, Felix said still looking at the temple on the rock, in the distance.

“Of course”, Bellerophon went back inside, rubbing his hands over each other to warm up.

“I wonder, would he…if he knew…”, a voice coming from behind him and the glass window-door to the flat cut him off.

“My son thinks I underestimate and think less of him because he won’t follow what he thinks I want from him, but if you think my Bellerophon will hate you for who your family is, you are vastly underestimating both him and yourself”, Felix turned around to see Aristides standing there.

Felix went back inside without replying.

“She is something”, Aristides breathed before closing the window behind him.

The next day the boys woke up late, seeing as it was their first day of Christmas vacations and spent most of the day lazying about in the flat with a simple dinner at night, ordered in from a tavern nearby.

The morning after they took the Muggle buss to the center of town, going through most of Athens’ northern suburbs, an experience that Felix found most interesting, yet not nearly as interesting as climbing and visiting the Acropolis rock, with its white marble steps and the Parthenon and Erechtheion at the top.

“The city, it’s so big…”, Felix commented seeing the whole of the Athens’ basin from atop the rock, and with Bellerophon speaking nonstop and with passion about each different neighborhood, landmark and place’s history, mythology and points of interest.

Next, they visited the various sights next to the Acropolis, the museum, Thesion, agora and so on with Felix finding the narrow alleys of Plaka and Monastiraki areas the most fascinating, as he perused the various antique shops and vendors along the way. “Everything is so…old! And mixed with modern elements and stuff…I wish Charles and the others could have been here.”

An hour later, and three hours past noon they sat down to eat in something called “Tzatziki Palace”, which as Bellerophon explained to Felix was a yogurt sauce they added to their kebabs, as well as other dishes.

“This Muggle money looks different than the ones I saw Charles’ family use in the UK?”

“Yeah, different countries have different currencies in the Muggle world.”

“Why? It sounds hugely inefficient I mean the whole of the Wizarding world has gold galleons and so on…”

“Tell that to the Mundanes’ politicians…”

“Politicians suck everywhere”, Felix took a bite out of his food. “Oh, my days, this is good!” He exclaimed with a mouth-full of gyros, sauces running down his chin and fingers. “What did you say this is called, again?”

Bellerophon couldn’t help but laughing. “Soubláki apo óla, soublaki with everything inside, tzatziki, French fries, pork gyros, tomatoes, onions and herbs…all nicely wrapped up inside a pita.”

Half an hour later Bellerophon took them to yet another delight, a patisserie serving traditional sweets.

“I can’t even pronounce this, but it is to die for!” Felix exclaimed, wolfing down the sweet.

“Galaktompoúreko? Yeah one of my favourites as well.”

“Your language is a tongue-twister sometimes.”

“Takes some doing but you are learning it just fine.”

“Translator spell helps. Where’s your Diagon Alley?” Bellerophon looked at him with an empty stare. “Where do you buy your school supplies, owls, books, potion ingredients and so on?”

“Ooohh, you mean Aristotle’s Forum, or the Forum, or the Magigora, or the Agora or the Arcanagora…yeah we’ve got plenty of names for it. It’s just outside Thessalonike, to the east overlooking the sea”, Bellerophon told him with a mouthful of sweet.

“Sounds nice.”

Finishing their deserts, they took the train and bus back to Bellerophon’s home, seven days and eight nights later the two boys sat outside, wrapped in blankets for the cold, watching the various different firework displays for the new year that was fast approaching.

“Any New Year’s Resolution?” Bellerophon asked.

“Those don’t work”, Felix shrugged.

“I don’t want to be angry anymore. So, I’m going to tell you what happened to my brother, I’m just so sick and tired of being angry, feeling angry…”, Bellerophon said after a moment’s silence, standing up more upright on his chair.

“I was ten years old when my brother became Polemofagos, he was in total bliss over it and mum and dad were so proud of him. His first task, along with his squadron, was to hunt down a witch who was abducting young boys and torturing them before killing them…them dying was salvation considering what she did to them…parents think their kids listen to about half of what they actually listen to, especially when they are as curious as I was…they hunted her down to the mountains of Krete thinking they had boxed her in, thinking they were going to capture her, but she was waiting for them, she had been hunting the hunters, luring them in where she and her Master could take them out. She…Sandra, Azrail and the others killed everyone else in the squadron, but she kept him alive…I wish…sometimes I wish I had been less curious. Two weeks later my father received a letter written in blood, my brother’s blood, he read it while listening to his son’s wailing screams for her to stop, just stop, please stop, stop! STOP! OH GOD I’M BEGGING YOU, PLEASEEEE STOP!...”, Bellerophon took a breath, his voice cracking, his fists clenched tight and his eyes watering as his chest heaving faster.

“In the letter was a detailed, vivid description of what she had done to him, and why along with where he could be found. I only know what happened after from my mother’s reaction when my father returned, from her screams of anger and despair when he told her what had happened in Sandra’s lair in Krete. He arrived there alone, knowing it could be a trap to bait him, Hellada’s Minister of Magic away from Athens and the protection he enjoyed there, but he went alone. He found no one in the cave, other than my brother, bound, tortured and mutilated, whimpering, drooling and…driven insane and unable to recognize his own father. I wish I did not know what she did to him, but I do. So, my father did the only thing he could…he did the merciful thing, what no parent should ever have to do…he took out his wand and cast the killing curse on his own son, his firstborn…his own flesh and blood. He gave him a clean, fast death. Mum blames him, she thinks Basileios could have mended, somehow made whole again, but she did not go into his Archon’s office and did not look the memories stored in the Pensieve there…I did, there was nothing left of my brother. Letting him live would not have…my father did the right thing.”

Bellerophon paused, trying to calm his breathing, wiping his eyes. “The truth is I don’t hate my father for what he had to do for my brother. He is the bravest man I know, even if it cost him his marriage, he did the right thing for his child.”

“Then why, my son, are you so angry at me?” Aristides’ voice came from behind them, strained and in pain.


	7. Chapter 7:  Courage’s many forms part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 7: Courage’s many forms part 2

Both boys snapped their heads at him, surprised. “You and mum never allowed me to grieve, always trying to cheer me up, never letting me be sad, telling me how I should feel rather than the devastating sorrow for having lost my older brother, a person who I deeply cared for, how I…”, Bellerophon said after the initial surprise wore off.

“My grief is not only for what I had to do, for losing your brother. It was also for the emotional pressure and strain it placed on you under and in my desire and effort to alleviate your pain I ended up causing you angst. I am sorry, Bellerophon my son”, Aristides replied to Bellerophon, with tears dropping from his eyes.

Bellerophon run to his father, embracing him.

“I’ll be inside”, Felix left, giving Bellerophon a squeeze on his shoulder.

Aristides gave him a nod with a warm smile, Felix could only nod back.

Felix entered the flat, looking outside to father and son talking under the fireworks. “Happy new year…”, He told himself.

A week later they apparated outside the Wizarding part of Piraeus. Seeing it from the outside, during the day, Felix thought it must have been a Muggle power plant at some point in the distant past, abandoned and derelict now or so the Muggles thought.

Half an hour later they were all aboard the Kymopoleia.

Felix headed to the aft of the ship, port side. “I’ve never walked so much in a large city before, my travels to London have so far been quick, just to get to or leave from King’s Cross and platform nine and three quarters for Hogwarts Express…I think I like it. The bustling streets packed with people, all the sounds, smells and stimuli, the shops…all the architecture new and old.”

“Yeah, she is something, Athens. I’m glad you enjoyed all the walking we did.”

“The seaside is beautiful as well.”

“I still cannot believe you just swam in the sea in mid-December!”

“Why? It’s a hell of a lot warmer than it is in the UK…”

“Yeah, but still.”

“I have a question, it took us only an hour or two to get from Elysion to Atali, but it took us a whole day and night to get to Piraeus, why?”

“Naí, going to Atali does not need to spend time on the journey, it is about the destination. Going to Piraeus or returning to Elysion from Athens is about the journey, it is for students new and old to adjust their mindset from family and vacations to school and vice versa. So, the ship’s spells change for each voyage, and its speed changes”, Bellerophon explained.

“We are going to Ithake, after all”, Kymopoleia left the dock, spreading its sails.

“For each student in plentiful and varied ways”, Bellerophon agreed nodding his head. “I’m going to go change into my school robes, I’m probably going to be bored to do it later.”

“It’s only nine in the morning…I’ll change after we leave Athens behind”, Felix leaned in against the deck’s wood and metal handrails.

Twenty minutes later Kymopoleia was gently parting the waves as it made its way out of the Saronikos gulf on its way round the Peloponnese for the return journey to Ithake and Elysion.

“That’s Sounio bay, and opposite us is Aegina to the far right and the Peloponnese behind and to the left. Endless blue everywhere around us, after. Sky and sea”, Bellerophon told him, returning from the ship’s hold, now changed into his school robes.

“So many buildings…I must walk more in London and other cities…”

“Where did you grow up? Sorry, I don’t mean to be judgmental but…”

Felix sighed, pressing his hands tightly around him, before running them over his face. “No, I know…I grew up…I mean…oh what’s the point, if you’ll hate me, you’ll hate me and after all you held up your end…thank you for telling me what happened to your brother and I am going to tell you of my story…better than to find out by someone else”, Felix turned around, sitting on the broad ship’s handrails.

Around them the students started to settle on the decks, as the sun rose higher on the cloudy sky.

“You don’t have to whatever it is you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

“I…think I do- do have to tell you. I was born to an unwilling mother, the man who sired me raped my mother because of his “grand” plan to unify all the great pure-blood Wizarding families into one. So, I was born to a mother I never met, until very recently, and to a family without love. I was removed from her care up until two years ago and raised in isolation by a father, two siblings and servants who all one way or another made my life a daily, living hell. I joined Hogwarts, and met people who cared for me, my best friend ended up being my cousin by some fate, and I met my mother. People who loved me. Then, last summer my half-brother and sister…Azrail and Ernaline tried to kill me and murdered my cousin, Charles Blake”, Felix told Bellerophon in a low, steady voice. His face slightly tilted, eyes looking down at the deck.

“You…you are…”, Bellerophon stammered.

“Dreogan Gaunt, told you he…I was devastated I legally changed my name to what my mum had wanted to name me and her surname just before Azrail decided to play demolition with the Ministries…”

“I…I don’t know what to say…”, Bellerophon’s mouth opened and closed yet no words materialized out of it.

“You hate me?”

“If I ever did…no, I don’t hate you. I don’t know if I’m even surprised. Just need some time to process this. Oh, and I dislike how Socrates is right more than not”, Bellerophon tried to joke the awkwardness away.

“What did he say?”

“Hate not what you understand not. The sins of his family should not weigh him down. I was being…childish about…well you…I mean Dreogan, brother of Azrail, and well Socrates spoke his mind as he always does.”

“He has a way with words and ideas”, Felix agreed, nodding his head and feeling less intimidated by the possibility of his new friend turning on him.

“And he knows it”, Bellerophon managed a chuckle.

“Can I ask you something personal?” Felix asked, shifting his weight to alter his posture and see Bellerophon.

“Sure.”

“When your brother…when he…your father…did you cry?” Felix mumbled out.

“Sandra murdered my brother, my father only committed an act of mercy, and no, I hadn’t. It was strange new year’s night, when I told you about it all and then me and dad talked…it was as if the dam broke…”

“I can’t, I haven’t…when I try to, I start shaking and I can’t stop and then that pool of black bottomless void inside grows. You were wrong, I’m not afraid of upsetting the surface or what’s under it. I’m…I…I just…”, Felix struggled. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Uhm, I don’t know. The mess hall is below deck in what once was the gun deck”, Bellerophon didn’t press more, remembering Lydia’s advice.

“Let’s go find the others”, Felix left with a quick stride.

A day and a night later they saw Elysion’s lights appear on the horizon.

“Great, more walking up and down the mountain”, Felix whined

“You consider it not required for Charon’s Path?” Socrates inquired, looking at the cards in his hand. Having eaten dinner at the mess hall the six friends; Felix, Bellerophon, Socrates, Lydia, Euredeke and Marios were playing cards above deck, wrapped in their coats and blankets to protect them from the night’s cold.

“I looked it up, it’s a relatively easy uphill walk from the estuary near Parga to the Acherontion and it shouldn’t be more than one or two hours walk inland”, Felix replied looking at the cards in his hand.

“You think it too convenient?” Socrates remained emotionless.

“You two are going to play?” Marios shifted in his seat, looking excited.

“You are transparent, my friend”, Socrates told him, placing a card down on the table.

“I am not! Okay maybe a little, but come on, play!” Marios laughed.

“I think it is too convenient, even if we were to walk to the start of the river, to the springs in the mountains it is not more than twelve hours straight walking, of course we won’t walk that much in a day, what with stops to eat, rest, other needs and so on it should take about a day, add whatever the Professors, and Elysion’s founders may have in store for us and it should not take more than two days. Archon’s giving a third day for whoever might get lost or slacking. So, why the mandate for stamina?”

“Ah, but that makes me wonder…”, Socrates rubbed his chin with one hand.

“Oh god…”, Bellerophon rolled his eyes with a smirk.

“When do you ever not wonder, brother?” Lydia smiled.

“…what do you, or we, not know, the Professors do?” Socrates continued as if the other two had not spoken at all.

“What I’m wondering is which of the three Trials is a lie, or deceit”, Felix said placing down a card.

““An interesting proposition”, Socrates said, as Lydia placed a card down on the table after Felix.

“Or contains a lie”, Felix tapped it with his wand causing the cards to explode. “Damn.”

“The Trials can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, just like Acherontion’s prophesies. From what I’ve been told”, Socrates placed a card down after Marios. Marios was faster in tapping them with his wand gaining a point.

“Interpretation is one thing, I don’t know how or where…yet but there is subterfuge and deception in the Trials”, Felix insisted.

“Is not life a deception of death and the illusion of seven faulty senses?” Socrates asked, looking up above the ship’s rigging and sails to the star-lit sky.

“Sometimes I feel sorry I can’t understand my own twin brother. This is not one of those times”, Lydia laughed.

“Oh, you mean to tell me there are times when you do understand him?” Bellerophon joked tapping the cards with his wand, making them explode. “Meh.”

“she pretends to with exceptional mastery”, Socrates lost another point to Marios.

“If the senses are faulty and a deceptive illusion, are we not all emulating, imitating and simulating what we think we want from others and what we want others to experience from us?” Felix asked Socrates. Bellerophon, Marios and Lydia looked at him weird.

It took Socrates a moment to reply. “An interesting concept.”

“What? You have nothing else to say?” Bellerophon exclaimed in disbelief.

“Silence is also a form of speech.”

“Damn, it was good while it lasted!”

Socrates remained silent for the rest of their approach to Elysion’s port.

Caladrius perched on Felix’s shoulder as they were disembarking from Kymopoleia, giving out bird-cries.

“Rain incoming if an Augurey is crying”, The Divination professor said aloud, passing by them.

“Does it give a date and time for the rain?” Bellerophon asked, grinning.

“It’s not a weather app!” Lydia rolled her eyes.

“With my luck? During Quidditch practice”, Felix whined, scratching Caladrius under his beak. The silvery-blue bird hooted happily, shivering its feathers.

“At least we probably won’t have to do the Charon’s Path in rain or snow, seeing as it’ll be in end of March or so”, Bellerophon remarked.

“You forget, up and down a mountain until mid-February, because who knows why not…”, Felix replied as they made their way to the tricastle, and the Wonderers’ common room.

Later in the day, they were finishing their Quidditch practice, with Felix discovering just how intensely he could disagree with another person and with what frequency.

“Doriis team will try to stall our chasers and…”, Felix interrupted Adrianos giving his instructions to the team’s beaters.

“They won’t, they have good beaters and they will use them to bludger us to death while their chasers fire multiple shots each time at our goal keeper because they have sensed that his weakness -no insult intended- is having to deal with follow-up shots”, Felix tried to remain calm in his remark. The sky above them had different ideas as clouds gathered black and ominous, reflecting onto the sea, casting it a deep unforgiving blue colour near to grey.

“In Hogwarts do what you want, here you obey me and my orders, if you can’t do that, quit the team”, Adrianos snapped his head to Felix, his lips deforming in anger.

“Okay…” Felix was cut short by the arrival of heavy, tear-shaped drops of water from above. “Of course…”

“You, seeker. Your only job is…”, Adrianos was cut off again.

“I know…find the Golden Snitch”, Felix said loudly before flying off to search for the small, golden, flying ball. “Let’s get this over with, it’s raining…and I’m missing the Hufflepuff team more and more…”, he whispered under his breath.

Two hours later and drenched from head to toe he entered the Wonderers common room, where Socrates and Lydia were studying Potions and Charms and Bellerophon was talking to Romanos and Marios.

“It started raining…”, Felix announced feeling unamused.

“I can see that!” Bellerophon burst laughing.

“It’s not funny!” Felix couldn’t help but smile, taken by the moment.

“You should smile more often, you look cute”, Lydia said closing the book she was reading for her charms revision. Felix blushed without even knowing why, but he could feel his cheeks burning up.

“I beg your pardon! I am the definition of cuteness!” Bellerophon exclaimed with Marios nodding fervently.

“Sure, you are, to someone. To me you’re a friend. Felix is cute”, Lydia replied, standing up and leaving, flicking her hair behind her head with her hand as she passed.

Felix waved at her, awkwardly, his face and his brain desiring different things as his lips tried to mix smiling and not smiling.

“Uhm, what are you doing?” Bellerophon rubbed the ridges of his nose.

“What do you mean?” Felix replied, his mind trying to think on what Bellerophon meant, considering he could not think of what he had done or was doing that could be wrong.

“Felix, I know we are still fourteen-approaching-fifteen and all, but you do realize that one of the school’s hottest girls was just flirting with you, right?” Bellerophon told him somewhere between disbelief and frustration.

“Whaaaa? Nah, you must be mistaken!” Felix blushed an even more crimson hue.

“Interesting, you seem to not allow yourself to see in you what others see in you, when you believe yourself different from their assessment”, Socrates said, his eyes rising from the books on Potions he had been reading.

“Even I understood that one! I think…”, Bellerophon raised an eyebrow, tilting his head sideways a little.

“Self-improvement is important, Bellerophon my friend”, Socrates told him placing the book on the table in front of him.

“This is the first time you’ve called me your friend.”

“Words are important, but time is more so. I have given you my time.”

Felix seemed lost in thought for a moment, before he leaned in so that only his friends could hear him. “Socrates, would you make friends if Azrail was your half-brother, or would you be afraid of them getting murdered?”

“To fear is to be alive, I would fight to protect them, fists, teeth, wand and all, but refuse their friendship I would not, brother of the White Raven”, Socrates replied in a low voice.

“That was, indeed, very transparent a question, friend of Bellerophon and Socrates”, Bellerophon nodded, trying not to laugh.

‘Indeed, friend of Bellerophon, Socrates, Charles, Claudia, Emerick, Lydia and Marios, oh and Ethel and Angel.”

“The question then becomes, why did you leave Hogwarts for this exchange program?” Socrates said, leaning back against the hammock.

“To keep them safe, and to not remember, I thought.”

“Thinking is good, what do you think now?”

“I don’t know, I’m going to have a shower and crash. It’s been a long day”, Felix said leaving for the showers room.

“For some Ithake is the destination, and for some it would seem is the start of the journey”, Socrates went back to his book.


	8. Chapter 8:  Searching Prophesy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8: Searching Prophesy

Felix sat on his bed’s edge, showered and in his PJs, ready for sleep, yet something was slowly reawaking inside him, demanding action, and scaring him to a next incarnation.

Digging into his trunk he found what he was looking for.

“I haven’t attempted to drink this since before last summer and the dreams that are not dreams have since decreased…”, Felix held Professor Ixion’s Seer Potion in one hand and his wooden glass in the other. “Perhaps if I start drinking it again, I’ll see the past and all the good times…well here goes nothing.”

He poured a few drops into the wooden cup and downed it in one go.

In an instant the dorm, the beds and his environment dissolved, replaced with the seer’s cave, faded and distant. Moist and dark. Behind him, outside the cave he could hear running water.

In the back of the cave, upon a stage of marble she danced, half-naked and ghostly-translucent yet not a ghost, Achronia Acheron’s seer, Pluto’s Oracle.

He could feel himself walking closer to her, looking down in a pool of water he saw his face reflecting there, only there he saw the face not of himself but of a thirteen-year-old Azrail. His skin was not yet as pale as it was in present day, his hair black, long in locks without the white strands he sported now and his green eyes sparkling menacing, cold and void of childhoodness.

“Welcome young one, what do you seek from Pluto’s Oracle?” She asked him, ceasing her dancing, her voice sounding as from not inside the cave, otherworldly and distant.

“You mean Achronia, Lethargos’ Oracle? I have been researching the triad of wizard and witches that became known as the “Old Gods” for four years now. My search begun in a children’s poem of this land, of the Two sisters’ brother. I read it by chance in one of uncle’s friend’s home. Why I’ve come? What I seek? I have found the Book of Leaves, “retrieved” it from a private collection with sister’s help, who knew she’d be so proficient at killing and she is as old as I am. I have searched the other items you and your kin created, I am searching for them and my search brings me here, for the Shadeglass. I know you used it to read the dead and predict the future, the Persians stole it and it has since travelled all over the world. Just before the Second Muggle World War Leokritos Atopos, a Hellenic wizarding explorer brought it back from China. I know it’s here”, Azrail approached her in slow, steady and confident strides.

“You know much omen of Charontas, what you seek you will find and lose it again. Your Sire’s creation will offer you a choice in your third battle; your decision will reveal your deepest desire and mark him as the child that wonders”, with her Prophesy spoken threads of spider silk appeared out of the void, wrapping around his wrists and arms. Achronia vanished like a faded memory revealing the cave’s rear wall behind her.

He saw himself take out his wand, which was a lot less bent and scythe-like and cast Confrigo on the crack at the wall behind the marble stage.

Walking on the stage, over the rock debris, he entered the new orifice in the rock, barely large enough to fit one human, with a pedestal carved from the limestone floor and a cast-black-iron cup with engraved skulls placed on it.

“The Shadeglass, I have found you”, Azrail said with an almost religious awe in his voice. “Only two remain now. The spring and the Book of Changes.” Picking up the Shadeglass and stuffing it in his Slytherin-green school robes’ inner pocket he exited the cave.

“Averill”, upon his order the House-Elf apparated in front of him.

“Home”, Azrail ordered the servant, taking hold of his shoulder they dissaparated.

The environment around him dissolved and the familiar dark room appeared.

The old man lay on the wet floor, Azrail stood above him wrapped in the Dementor’s cloak Felix knew was in fact the Armour of the Old Gods. “First you keep insisting the Shadeglass is in Hogwarts, then you tell me Hogsmeade, then Hogwarts this mansion, Hogwarts, someplace in Cornwall, Hogwarts again, now what are you going to tell me this time, Lethargos?” Azrail asked him, frustrated with a seething low voice.

“Elysion, it is in Elysion”, Lethargos said tired.

“I will have Marigold convince you to tell me the truth of the Shadeglass’ location”, Azrail turned to leave.

“You killed the only person who could”, Lethargos said with an evil laugh. Azrail left the dungeon slamming the door behind him.

Felix woke up from his trance with a feeling of being shaken. Opening his eyes, he saw Bellerophon holding him from his shoulders and Socrates next to him.

“Was I talking aloud?” Felix asked groggily.

“Not everything, I just couldn’t wake you up, so I brought Socrates over to help.”

“Azrail’s looking for the Shadeglass? That is not good”, Socrates commented.

“He has been searching for it for a very long time, yet Hogwarts’ library doesn’t have anything on it as far as I could find”, Felix lay back on his bed.

“There’s some things in Elysion library, but not much”, Bellerophon said.

“What time is it?” Looking around Felix saw the others in the dorm vast asleep.

“Late”, Bellerophon stated, heading over to his bed.

“Goodnight”, Felix fell asleep almost instantly.

Next day’s first class was Potions.

Taking their seats in the trigonal classroom, Felix noticed the murky black liquid inside a vial on the Professor’s desk, next to another of a weird orange colour in another vial.

Professor Oraioskolikas waited for them to be seated and be silent before starting his lecture. “Hellebore, another highly toxic plant of Hellada’s fields. If consumed or even come into contact with it is poisonous and will kill you. It’s various parts are used in several different potions and poisons. It can cause cardiac arrest and vertigo, but it can also be used to treat paralysis, gout, and insanity.

“Hemlock is another poisonous plant growing freely in our country’s countryside near rivers. Combined with Hellebore and Wolfsbane and you get what the Ancients called “Styx”. A most horrific and nigh-instantaneous death. Always wear full arm gloves, long pants and face protection when handling either of these plants or their parts, as prolonged exposure from touching them can inflict any number of symptoms as well as excruciating death.

“Here, I have two vials. One is orange-lilac in colour and clear, the other is pure pitch black and murky. The orange one was discovered in the sixteenth century and it’s the only known antidote to Styx. If you ever make the mistake of consuming Styx, or get poisoned by another with it, you have something less of thirty seconds of pure excruciating painful life to consume the antidote. After that you are dead.” Professor Oraioskolikas paused his lecture for questions. In the classroom’s dim light the murky black liquid seemed even more ominous.

“Sir, who discovered it first?” A lean, blond-haired Doriis girl asked.

“It’s been known by many different names and it’s been re-discovered many a time throughout recorded human wizarding history. It’s true origins are lost in time.

“To ancient Hellenes it was known at least since Homer’s time, but that’s where both archaeological and magicarcheological evidence stop.” The Professor answered her.

“If it’s so fast-acting sir, does it not pose danger to the potion maker?” An Olympians’ boy asked.

“All potions and all poisons pose danger to the potion maker, if they don’t know what they’re doing. This particular poison does hold more danger than most, but for one thing it is the finished product that is so fast-acting, and I’m assuming you are not going to make the deadliest poison known to wizard kind to go and consume it. Its individual ingredients are not as fast-acting and require more than a passing touch to kill you. If you take care to wear the protection I’ve aforementioned and clean your tools and potion-making bench you should be fine. If not, one less living being consuming oxygen in the world.”

“Exquisitely morbid, sir”, a short, plump, brunette girl said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

“I try and no, Mrs. Maurokaíros, you can’t try it out”, Professor Oraioskolikas told her.

“Spoilsport”, she responded making some of the other students laugh.

“Giatí théleis…uhm…na to pieís aftó;” Felix tried to ask her in Hellenic. “Did I say it right?” He asked Bellerophon sitting next to him who gave him an affirmative nod.

“Life’s a burden, all of it”, she told him, sitting on a desk across from them, her hands idly on her lap.

“Life’s…I don’t know.”

“She is correct, I can verify that”, Euredeke said in a voice almost like a giggle. She sat behind them a couple of rows.

“Teenagers…back to my lesson we go”, Professor Oraioskolikas continued his lecture, passing the antidote around for them to smell and see, but held the Styx in his hands while showing them each it closer up.

“Why do you think life’s a burden?” Felix approached the Doriis girl after the lesson was over.

“Why do you? I know that face, you are not like the rest of the kids in this school. You know Algeine, timelessness and Lethargos. You know what it’s like to feel trapped and long for sweet release, do you not?” She asked back.

“Death may be a release, but no I do not want to die…yet”, Felix felt uncomfortable talking to her, something in the way she gazed at him with her hazel eyes.

“You sound uncertain, White Raven’s brother”, she started walking away with a shrug.

“Wait, what? How do you…”, Felix’s voice trailed watching her leave without further registering his voice or question.

“Don’t look at me, I haven’t told anyone, I wouldn’t”, Bellerophon said shaking his head rapidly. “And I very much doubt Socrates and Lydia would break your trust.”

“Whoever thinks that giving me up to Azrail is going to get them anything but the nasty end of an Avada…or worse, they are deluding themselves.”

“Let’s not test that theory, yes?” Bellerophon looked around for anyone close to listen in on their conversation.

“I’m not going to scream it from the rooftops, but I am getting tired of being afraid, Charms next?” Bellerophon nodded.

They made their way across the corridors and bridges to the Charms tower and climbed to the Fourth-year classroom. The tenth-floor classroom looked at the sea passage between Ithake and Kephalonia and the Quidditch pitch floating above the waves in the near distance. Inside, the classroom took up the whole floor, with metal lattice strands rose from the wood and ceramic tiled floor, creating a circular amphitheater around the center of the classroom. Each seat on the metal lattice was covered with maroon leather with a smaller sized surface for desk per seat. A metal chandelier hung from the ceiling.

“The Jasmine room, I have grown and been raised in magic, and every time…how can a chandelier be so beautiful?” Lydia spoke low, seeing the chandelier’s metal buds open up, light escaping through the petals.

“So intricate, the metal lattice emulating a star jasmine’s growth out of the soil and around trees and surfaces as it climbs, every leaf and flower looks like it really is growing out of the floor”, Felix said admiring the craftsmanship.

“And the smell during spring…the smell is amazing”, Lydia said taking her seat, Socrates on one end and Felix on the other with Bellerophon next to Felix.

“Substantive charms, this is a complex set of charms to learn, which is going to take us two classes to get through and will play an important role during this year’s exams so, pay attention people”, Professor Miranda Doxa told them, entering the classroom under the lattice arch from her office’s door. “Substantive charms are a category of spells used to create substance where there might be none. Examples vary, you can temporarily convert air from air to say water or soil or a stone, you can turn water into something you can walk on like ice or boulders, you can turn a ghost to solid ectoplasm -they do NOT like that by the way, and it won’t turn them corporeal. Or in theory you can…pull someone out of time or in it with one of these spells. Although, there are no living records of that being -successfully- done.”

“How can you pull anyone in time? Ma’am”, Bellerophon asked.

“In time? How could you pull anyone out of it? Doesn’t, wouldn’t that make them…well, dead?” Felix wondered.

“No, Socrates dear, don’t you even think about starting to wonder! Or this class will go on perpetually. -people laughed- Many a wizard and witch have experimented with becoming eternal by removing themselves from the flow of time. So, if we assume that one of them succeeded, using the spell “tempusessere” would pull them back in the flow of time again, with…unpredictable results for them, depending on the amount of…time they had spent out of it…dear lords it makes my head hurt every single time…”, Professor Doxa flipped some of her crimson tufts of hair behind her face, while looking at them with her blue inquisitive orbs.

“And onwards with my lecture we go!” She continued her lesson as thunderstorm clouds gathered outside.

“Quidditch game in a few hours, think we can win it?” Bellerophon asked Felix, exiting the classroom.

“Not likely, Doriis have a great team and your cousin is as stubborn as a mule and won’t listen to anyone. And I’m really not cutout to be a seeker. Beater or Chaser, yes. Seeker, no”, Felix tried to contain his frustration at Adrianos’ Captaining of the Wonderers team.

Their final class of the day was Care of magical creatures, on the grounds.

They gathered on the rocky beach under the drawbridge across from the tricastle.

“Quiet down, today we’ll study the ydrálogo or Kelpie. Fun fact, the ancients called it Poseidon’s horse believing the creature pulled Poseidon’s chariot in numbers, when in fact the creator of the legend is the wizard Erpemidon the smelly who used three of the creatures to pull his chariot along with a levitation charm to keep it afloat above the waves. I wouldn’t recommend them as a means of transportation though, as they ate dear old Erpemidon. Now, the Kelpie is a water shapeshifting creature, and they usually prefer to take horse forms. They used to be native to England and Ireland, but sub-species have become native to various parts of the world since ancient times.

“Now, if you positively want to ride one don’t do it without lots of experience and a placement charm and a bridle, otherwise you’re food.”

Professor Kokkinolemis placed a whistle in his lips and blew, the wind sweeping his shoulder-length brown hair.

“It’s going to rain…of course it will”, Felix whined. “And we have Quidditch practice and game later.”

Before Bellerophon could answer a horse-like creature with the tail of a fish popped it’s head out of the water’s surface, a silver leather and metal bridle across its back and neck. Its red mane wet stuck to its neck as it swam closer to the beach.

Professor Kokkinolemis continued his lesson, with the students getting to ride it, each, before class’ end.

Felix left for the Charms tower and the brooms’ landing. Five hours later the game was underway, and the Wonderers were losing bad. As predicted by Felix Doriis team’s beaters were pummeling them allowing their chasers to own the field. Adrianos kept yelling at his teammates with no positive result.

Rain was pouring heavy from the thick clouds above them, thunders blasting the sea below and the towers around them and the sea guardian circled the five-meter-high waves, his emerald scales contrasting the dark blue sea.

Felix spotted the golden snitch near one of the towers’ roofs. Felix knew Doriis’ seeker was faster than him, but he was more maneuverable and smarter. So, he turned his broom upwards, gaining altitude. When he was twice the tower’s length above it he flattened his body on the broom making a sharp turn diving vertically down like a peregrine hawk diving for its prey, with both hands on the broom’s handle.

Closing in he saw the Golden Snitch accelerate away from his grasping hand, down towards the sea.

The Doriis Seeker sped after him. Felix could not hear the commentator over the howling wind and thunders, but he knew the opposing Team captain would order his beaters to prevent him from catching the golden ball and Adrianos would not protect him from the bludger so, his strategy was to catch it as fast as he could, and he hoped gravity would enhance his broom’s speed, much like a peregrine uses the tactic to catch doves out of the air.

Below them the sea guardian’s body and spiked tail broke the sea surface, disappearing and reappearing above the turbulent waves.

Felix saw the Doriis seeker readying to smash onto him and at last moment he made a horizontal loop around him, letting him smash into an incoming wave.

He was close, very close, the little golden ball just a palm’s length out of reach. He flattened his body against the broom even more, his face nearly touching the handle, his right hand stretched out in front, he was nearly there, dodging wave after wave, maneuvering around them, decreasing the distance, his fingers almost able to wrap around it, to catch it and give them the victory.

Then he found himself flying ten meters up in the air before plummeting down below the surface, the bludger had impacted against his broom’s rear, smashing it to pieces.


	9. Chapter 9:  Vakomohostor, the Sea Guardian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9: Vakomohostor, the Sea Guardian

Felix hit the water, the impact rendering him unconscious, the waves covering him up as the wet Quidditch armour became heavier, dragging him down.

Coming to, he tried to orient himself, and understand which way was up. He discarded the armour bits from his knees, elbows, shoulders and torso, remaining with the school robes beneath and started to swim up towards the surface, some forty meters above him.

Out of the blackness he saw a huge form appear slowly, circling around him.

“The Sea Guardian, he is enormous!” Felix thought to himself as the serpent uncoiled around him, well over sixty meters long, with teal-emerald scales covering the length and girth of his body and head, large spines extruding out of his spine and skin from head to tail. Circling around he saw the Guardian’s head with its jaws open revealing eight sets of maulers and piercing blue snake eyes.

“I am Vokomohostor, son of Mahhoveras, Luvaaherston’s mate, Iarohavnas’ sire. Who are you, child of man?” He heard a whisper of a voice, like boulders grinding together, speaking low and steady.

“Of course, I can understand him, gigantic serpent…” He thought to himself before speaking aloud, as best he could underwater. “I am Felix, son of Hope, I am as of yet without a mate and childless. If you are going to eat me or kill me for trespassing in your patch of sea, get it over with.”

“I have not spoken to one of your kind in a long time, well over a thousand years when I was still but a young born and curious of the world above the sea. You are one of the funnier ones, Felix of Hope and Cillian. I do not eat your kind and I will not need to defend my patch of sea or offspring as long as you don’t threaten them. Should you attempt to threaten either I can deliver unto you death worse than being eaten alive. Much worse.”

“How am I not drowning? I should be dead by now”, Felix contemplated, feeling his throat and chest with his hand.

“Your kind knows not all the world’s magic, and its forms are more plentiful than there are fish in the sea”, the Sea Guardian replied.

“Your name…it’s not Hellenic”, Felix wondered with a statement rather than a question.

“We had no meanings for our names, but we had names since before humans came crawling out of the sea, before they became apes and learned to think and speak. Yet it was a King of Ur, when it rose out of the desert, who first gave us meanings for our names. We maintain them still, names and meanings” Vakomohostor answered the unasked question.

“What is the meaning of your name, Vakomohostor?” Felix asked as the Guardian brought his head leveled to Felix’s.

“Scales in endless blue, what is your name’s meaning, Felix?”

“Happiness, although lately I have not had much cause for it.”

“Humans alone believe happiness comes from anything else other than being alive.”

“And if being alive is a torment?” Felix asked the emerald-scaled Sea Serpent, feeling uncertain, although he did not know of what exactly.

“There’s always larger, carnivorous creatures around”, Vakomohostor replied. Felix could sense an ageless gentleness in his matter-of-fact answer, even if it came out in seeming apathy.

“Simplicity in nature”, Felix contemplated.

“Humans are very prone in forgetting they are part of a greater whole.”

“They must be getting worried up there”, Felix looked up, towards the surface. It was strange seeing the waves from beneath and not drowning.

“They are but I’ve not had a conversation in a whilesome, they will wait, what else can they do against a Guardian of the Sea with a twenty-meter-long tail which possesses the ability to throw building-destroying thunders and tidal-sized waves?” Vakomohostor gave a deep, guttural chuckle, creating ripples on the water.

“No, not much choice. I am from a place called England, where is your home?” Their conversation continued for three hours, and to Felix it felt like a lifetime passed.

“Vakomohostor…do you want to have some fun?” Felix asked with his lips curving in a mischievous smirk.

“What do you have in mind, Rovanithas?” Came the serpent’s reply, Felix sensing excitement building in his tone of voice.

“Rovawhatnow?”

“You have been born twice, even if you do remember it not. Thus, your name amongst us is Rovanithas, twiceborn”, Vakomohostor elaborated.

“I don’t even know how that would be possible, but how is it you know these things? I did not tell you about Cillian or this”, Felix asked, scratching his head, feeling his hair floating between his fingers.

“Water knows all, and you are covered by a sea-full of it. What do you have in mind?” The Sea Guardian asked, this time his interest showing more in his voice.

“Let me ride you out of here to Elysion’s port”, Felix cracked a grin from ear to ear.

“Why will this be fun?”

“For one thing I don’t think I’ll ever get another chance like this, and for a second thing, can you imagine the looks on their faces if after three hours I emerge out of the sea not only alive but Sea-Guardian-riding?” Felix replied, shaking from the excitement.

“Unorthodox…I will do this even if you try to hide your main reason for desiring this, brother of what they call “The White Raven”. Swim to my back and grab onto my scales”, Felix ‘yay-ed’ like a young child and with quick strokes swam to the serpent’s back, grapping onto the teal-emerald scales, while straddling Vakomohostor with his legs and locking them as best he could.

“Hold on tight Rovanithas,” Vakomohostor circled the water twice before launching himself up in top speed. “Wooooooaaaahhhhhh!!!” Felix yelled laughing.

They broke through the waves amidst the Professors, Archon and the two Quidditch teams trying to search and locate Felix. The storm was still raging, rain and thunders cascading around them.

Balancing himself thirty meters above the surface, Felix on his back, Vakomohostor released a serpent-like roar before falling back on the water. Felix yelled again holding onto the scales in a semi-terrified, semi-excited-out-of his-wits state.

The Sea Guardian swam to Elysion’s port as over them the storm cleared away.

“You can control the weather as well?” Felix yelled, surprised and impressed.

“Rain is water”, the ageless serpent laughed. “Thunder is friction.”

Vakomohostor sided the marble dock so Felix could jump on it and with a blink of his eyes the boy was dry as if he had never entered the water or had just spent three hours in it.

“I will depart for the sunless land in three moon cycles, I hope to converse some more with you, Felix twiceborn.”

“I didn’t drown, and I’m not even wet now, count on it Vakomohostor wiseserpent”, Felix nodded with a smile. The Sea Guardian nodded back before departing under the waves.

Felix noticed people landing on the port, others coming from the Astronomy tower’s entrance.

Bellerophon landed first after his father with their friends following suit.

“I suppose y’all be wanting some explanations?” Felix asked in a humorous, less depressed tone.

“I have no idea why you’d think that…”, Bellerophon shrugged.

“Sarcasm?” Socrates asked, looking at his sister who nodded back.

Felix recounted what had happened, without going into detail of what was said in his conversation with Vakomohostor.

“Since when you can talk to snakes?” A sixth-year boy asked the question Felix had been waiting for.

“Since I’m Cillian Gaunt’s son and he is Delphini’s great grandson, and as we all know, she was Voldemort’s daughter and he was Salazar Slytherin’s heir, Slytherin’s line can speak praseltongue, we can talk to snakes. And before either of you think about apprehending me and giving me up to Azrail, consider I have a sea dragon as my friend, now.”

“It is only an animal”, Adrianos scoffed. “What could it do against an army of Wizards?”

“It possess more consciousness and self-awareness than you ever will”, Felix said in reply, feeling his anger rise.

“Unlikely, I’m a human.”

“You overestimate your human self-awareness”, Lydia told him.

“I wonder, do you hide behind your ego because you know we will more clearly understand your stupidity otherwise, or because you are afraid it is your strongest…and only trait?” Socrates asked him, with a hand on his chin, as if in deep thought.

“What did you…” Adrianos begun to say but Aristides broke him off.

“Constraint yourself, boy. You are disgracing yourself and your family name, and are perilously close to a hefty detention, although at this point I’m sure House Wonderers would appreciate me banning you from any and all Quidditch activity for the remainder of your School life”, the man stepped in front of Adrianos, his face a mask of disgust.

The docks were now packed with students and Professors. “My name used to be Dreogan Gaunt, I changed it legally after finding my mother two years ago, and if you think that giving me to him will help you spring a trap to take him out, you’re all collectively morons”, Felix said loud enough so that everyone could hear him.

“Our parents believe…”, a third-year Doriis boy started saying.

“Your parents are idiots as well. Azrail used my father’s war for his own purpose, manipulated the chaos from the shadows for his plans and to facilitate the destruction of the Magical Governments in over a hundred countries simultaneously, and you think a bunch of kids with their parents with no Ministry to back them up are going to capture me, use me to lure him into a trap to kill him? When he’s also wearing the Armour of the Old Gods, rendering him immune to all physical and magical harm? And you think he won’t see it coming from a mile and a stretch away? Bitch please”, Felix concluded, hands crossed up against the front of his chest, left foot tapping rhythmically against the marble dock’s floor.

Aristides cleared his throat, trying to hide a smirk forming on his lips. “At this point I would like to point out that if anyone attempts this while I’m archontas of Elysion, they’ll be expelled so fast their great grandkids will be born whiplashed. Felix, please come with me, I’d very much like to know more about your encounter with the Sea Guardian”, Professor Atreos pressed his hands behind his back and left the port for his office, his broom flying off on itself.

Felix dropped a quick wink at Adrianos before following him.

“That was a very…clever move on your part, Mr. Burton”, Professor Atreos told him, they were just past the Great Hall’s bridge towards the tricastle.

“Thank you, sir”, Felix tried not to smile and to look serious, walking next to the School’s Archontas.

Ten minutes later they were in his office, sitting in the comfortable, leather armchairs by one of the windows.

Aristides had an extensive set of questions about his encounter and conversation with the Sea Guardian, although Felix kept the details of this conversation to himself as best he could, it had been one of the most profound experiences of his life, conversing with a creature over a thousand years old and without any selfishness, and he did not intent for anyone else to learn of the specifics.

“I can tell you this much, sir. Their form or forms of magic are both very strong and completely different from what human wizards and witches use. Without me telling him, he knew both who my father was and why I wanted to ride him out of the sea for”, Felix concluded, seeing Professor Atreos becoming frustrated at him keeping some things for himself.

“Very interesting, it has long been hypothesized they can use some form of telepathy, or perhaps Legilimency”, Aristides replied, his hands on his lap, his legs crossed one knee over the other.

“I won’t pretend to understand what or how Vakomohostor does what he does, but I don’t think it’s either of those things, he said he learns it through the water. So, I think somehow he’s using water to transfer knowledge? Or even understanding? I don’t know if and how that’d be possible, though. May I go now, sir?”

Archon Atreos nodded staying seated.

He exited the office from the Wonderers’ stairs, finding Bellerophon waiting for him in the common room talking with Romanos and Marios.

“Felix, my man!” Marios exclaimed rushing to bump fists with him. “So, you are good at Quidditch, amazing at Defense against the Dark Arts, you are going to commit to the Charon’s path from year four, Lydia likes you AND you are a parselmouth, anything else we should know?” Marios cracked a grin.

“That. Was. Way too cool!” Romanos agreed emphatically.

“Uh…thanks guys, I was just tired of being afraid so, I forced the issue”, Felix told then moving for the common room’s entrance. “I’m famished, you guys want to grab something to eat?”

“I have studying to do, Herbology is kicking my arse”, Romanos said going back to his books sprayed over one of the hammocks.

“Yeah, I’ll come with, who isn’t hungry at this time of day!” Marios said, picking up his backpack from the floor.

“Or all hours of the day and night!” Bellerophon teased him with a grin.

“Right, look who’s talking!” They exited the Wonderers Common room descending the stairs of the Wonderers’ tower to the main chamber of the tricastle.

They found Socrates, Lydia and Euredeke crossing the bridge heading to the tricastle. “Hey, we’re going to grab something to eat’, Felix told them, hands in his pants’ front pockets.

“Of course, my friend. Lead the way, I have a question for you. Is it possible to learn praseltongue or is one born with it? I find the possibility of talking to a thousand-year-old entity most appealing”, Socrates walked next to Felix, hands behind his back.

“I’m afraid you are born with it, but perhaps I can translate back and forth”, Felix replied, extracting a generous smile from Socrates.

“Most fascinating, Felix. Most fascinating indeed!”

They started crossing the bridge towards the Great Hall and were mid-way when a girl he had not seen before blocked his passage, along with Adrianos and two more boys, all of them seventh-year. Other than Adrianos none of the others were from Wonderers House.

The girl and the unknown boys blocked his way while Adrianos and the other boy stood between Felix and his friends.

“May I pass, please?” Felix asked, calmly, yet with obvious irritation in his voice.

“You are Azrail’s brother”, the girl stated. Her head was shaved clean making her amber eyes look fearsome, standing a good head taller than Felix.

“Half-brother, and not by any choice of mine. May I pass, please?” Felix asked again.

Natasha came up to his face, an inch away while Adrianos and the other boy pushed back his friends. “No.”

“Punch me”, Felix said with Natasha obliging him with a sadistic laugh.

“Again”, she punched, yet with less confidence than before.

“Again, if it’ll make you feel better”, she hesitated even more now, giving the punch less strength than the other two. Felix’s nose and lips were bleeding.

“Did it?” Felix asked, looking straight into her now hesitant eyes.

“Y-yes, you are Azrail’s brother”, she replied, remaining there, within his personal space.

“And you are lost if you think you felt good hitting someone who’s done you no ill. You have become the thing you hate. Now, touch him again and I’ll put my words into action. Natasha, Sandra’s cousin”, Socrates’ voice was neither calm nor irritated, but downright angry.

“What did you say to me, twerp?” Natasha tried to shove her way past Felix, who stood there, as if rooted on the bridge’s grey granite tiles. “You hurt one of us, you hurt all of us.”

The three seven-year boys got their wands out, as did Felix’s friends. Natasha stopped trying to push her way through and noticing something on the floor she kneeled down to grab it.

It was Felix’s photograph, the one where he was embracing Charles, in Hogsmeade with both of them in rainbow hair.

“Give that back to me!” Felix’s face and tone of voice changing in an instant.

“Who’s he? Your boyfriend?” Natasha’s lips curved in a satisfied smirk, holding the picture in her left arm.

‘”Give it back, now!” Felix’s voice was low but there was no mistaking the rage bubbling to the surface within it.

“Or what, malakisméno?” Her smile vanished, replaced again with that insecure anger from before.

“Or I’ll teach you some manners, bitch’s niece”, Felix spat back at her, retrieving his wand.

“What did you say to me, maláka!”

“Learn to behave better and give me back the fucking photograph!” Felix replied, now pointing his wand right at her face, his face distorted in rage.

“I’ll behave however the fuck I want!” Sandra replied, making the worst possible mistake she could have done at the moment, as she began tearing up the photograph.

A blink of an eye later she was flying back up against the bridge’s walls, Felix having used a blasting charm at her.

The other boy next to her flipendoed him on his back, while Bellerophon set Adrianos’ robes on fire, Socrates threw a vial on the boy who had cast Flipendo on Felix, knocking him out cold and Lydia cast Petrificus totalus on the final boy standing next to Adrianos.

Adrianos put out the flames but before he could do anything else Socrates smashed a vial on him next. Half a second later he could do nothing more other than vomit slugs and bogies.

“I find the lack of vitriolic stupidity emanating from your mouth intensely refreshing, Adrianos”, said Socrates before Bellerophon knocked out his cousin with a blue-energy-jet spell on Adrianos’ face.

Having recovered Felix stood up, casting another spell at Natasha who dodged it, smashing a gap on the bridge’s wall instead. With a quick stride he grabbed Natasha by her collar shoving her through so that only her legs touched the floor and the rest of her suspended over the void below them. If she fell it’d be a fifty meters drop to the rocks and sea below.

“Give me the picture!” He demanded, his visage a drawing of disgust and rage.

“I can throw it off, let me go, you little shit!” She replied, trying to fight off his hold on her collar.

“Why do you want to behave like Sandra? She tortures little boys for fun. What is so amazing about her that you’re trying to emulate her so bad?” Felix asked, seeing her not reply how he had expected her to.

“She’s family, do you know what’s like growing up with her?” Natasha replied, less irritably than before.

“Cillian Gaunt is my father, Azrail and Ernaline Gaunt are my half-siblings. Do I know? Answer me this, did Sandra torture you day and night for eleven years to the point where you can’t remember the first seven?” Felix released her, stepping back and removing the top of his robes and shirt, revealing his scars to everyone around.

Ignoring the gasps, he made direct eye contact with her, her jaw slacking. “Do I know? Intimately. I also know this; your family does not make you who you are, your choices and your deeds do. So, who do you want to be? Natasha or Sandra?” He asked her, without breaking eye contact but considerably less angry.

“You are…how…you are not the only who resisted…who do I want to become? I don’t know…I don’t even know…here, take your damned photograph and stay away from me”, Natasha threw the picture at him, turned and left walking fast.

“I did not approach you to begin with”, Felix whispered pocketing the photograph, after repairing it.

”Your brother did that to you?” Bellerophon asked him as Felix was putting his clothes back on.

“Brother tortured my body sister tortured my soul and father…did nothing to prevent it. “Evolution through conflict and strife, knowledge through adversity”. He let them torture me, believing it’d make me more powerful…I was so young…”, pointing his wand at the broken bridge wall he cast Reparo at it.

“We all must learn from adversity, evolution is driven by adaptation, yet for a parent to behave like so…unconscionable”, Socrates shook his head.

Looking at Socrates, Felix motioned them to follow him. “Come with me, please, all of you”, he told them, leading them back inside the tricastle.

“I thought we were going to the Great Hall?” Felix did not speak again until they were in the olive grove. Sitting on the roots of one of the older and larger trees he closed his eyes, feeling the bark with his fingers.

“It’s so peaceful here”, he whispered.

Socrates sat opposite him, cross-legged, Bellerophon, Marios and Lydia sat next to Socrates.


	10. Chapter 10:  Three of all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10: Three of all

Opening his eyes Felix told them everything, his life he could remember from age seven on up to Charles death, although he left the specifics of that out, then he told them what he knew of his father’s effort to create him, the Arcana Imperium and what he knew of Azrail’s plans.

“Now, you know everything there is to know about me, what Claudia and Emerick know, what Charles knew. Dreogan Gaunt, Felix Burton…”, Felix finished speaking, twirling his fingers on his lap.

“We know everything you told us, and perhaps some more we can interpret, yet if we knew everything you’d become boring to us, do you know everything there is to know of yourself?” Socrates asked him, with solemn concentration.

“I know I don’t want to be like Azrail”, Felix answered.

“Definition by or in resistance to a parent or sibling…what and who are you under that original self-definition?” Socrates pressed him on.

“Felix B…”

“That’s only a name given to you by another, who are you?” Socrates interrupted him.

“Hufflepuff? Wonderer?”

“School’s societal grouping and divisional system intended to separate, and group students based on common or similar personality traits, who are you?”

“I-I don’t know”, Felix shrugged frustrated at not being able to provide a more comprehensive answer.

“Good answer. Now, you can start find out”, Socrates gave a satisfied nod.

“Thank you for trusting us with this, but can we go back inside? I’m freezing…”, Bellerophon tried to sound as whiny as he felt.

“It’s okay and the sun’s out, but sure, I’m hungry as well now”, Lydia replied standing up and dusting her robes.

“I’m not too cold either, but food does sound good”, Felix retorted.

“I expected nothing more from a cold-blooded northerner, but you too Lydia!” Bellerophon mocked hurt.

“It’s not my fault I’m hot”, Lydia gave a wicked smirk.

“Lydia one, Bellerophon zero, I’m famished”, Marios laughed.

“Ah well, lose some win some”, Bellerophon laughed.

Right then Caladrius landed on Felix’s shoulder, displaying his left leg, a letter tied to it.

“Have you something for me?” Felix untied the letter with one hand while giving his Augurey a scratch under his beak with the other. Caladrius nibbled on his earlobe, pleased.

“Still no answer? Did you find them?” Felix asked the silver-feathered bird.

Caladrius gave a whimsical cry. Felix sighed deeply.

“Charles’ family?” Lydia squeezed his shoulder in support.

“Yeah, they are under the Fidelius charm, to keep ‘em safe from Azrail. I had hoped my mum, Hogwarts’ Headmistress or Alfred would get my messages across somehow, but my mum doesn’t know where they are, Professor Horsewood doesn’t think it wise and Alfred won’t even reply”, Felix started walking.

“Where you close before?” Lydia asked.

“Very…”

Socrates attempted to say something, but he snapped his mouth shut after a look from his sister, making Bellerophon snicker.

Reaching the drawbridge, they walked on the creaking wooden planks.

“Your friends they are replying, at least?” Lydia asked him.

“They are, news from Hogwarts don’t sound good, the Headmistress seems like she’s vanished, the deputy Headmaster is slowly depriving Hogwarts from anything fun, giving detentions for the smallest offense, people are afraid of him and of Azrail as the attacks have begun anew, although different from before. He is attacking museums and archaeological sites now, for some reason”, Felix answered her.

“It would appear he’s searching for something “, Socrates stated, increasing his stride to walk besides Felix.

“He has been searching for the Shadeglass, something called the spring of eternity and the Book of changes…but mainly the Shadeglass for a while now”, Felix told Socrates.

“It lay in Acherontion until it was stolen, again, some eight – nine years ago”, Socrates said back.

“By no none other than teenage Azrail, according to a vision Felix saw some weeks ago, but then somehow it was stolen from him somehow…or he lost it?” Bellerophon said walking faster. They were now across the tricastle and past the bridge.

“It would be bad if he was to acquire it”, Marios said.

“Why? All I’ve ever found out about it is the Oracle used it to foresee the future from the dead”, Felix replied, shrugging his shoulders.

“In Hellenic Wizarding Mythology, it is written that the Shadeglass was created by Lethargos, primordial God of Death and the Underworld, for Pluto New God of the Death and the Land of the Dead, and used by Achronia, Oracle of the Dead for her Necromancy Prophesies.

“In theory and if you believe non-fact mythology, anyone who possess the Shadeglass can drink an item’s essence and derive the future from the dreams of those beyond the veil. It’s all fantasy, though”, Socrates sounded certain, Felix was not convinced it was all non-existing mythology.

“The Shadeglass does exist, though. So, who knows what it can do, really?”

“Thus, it would be bad if your brother was to acquire it”, Socrates concluded as if he had expected this would be the conclusion.

“Your circular logic astonishes me, sometimes”, Bellerophon laughed, rolling his eyes.

“I wonder, is it my logic that astonishes you, that you are beginning to understand it, or perhaps that you start to comprehend its value?”

“My head hurts now.”

“Most excellent news, you have an active mind”, Bellerophon could never tell if Socrates was teasing him, or meant what he said and was complimenting him.

“There’s no winning, is there?” Bellerophon sighed.

“Winning is not required in pursuits of the mind, only understanding.”

“Understanding is a double edged sword. Its own blessing and its own curse”, Felix stated.

“A very astute observation, I wonder if you can elaborate further on it”, Socrates seemed thrilled at the prospect.

“Do you want him to remain sane, or not?” Bellerophon snickered.

“Why do you so underestimate yourself, friend?” Socrates’ eyes constricted in apparent sadness.

Lydia spoke before Bellerophon could answer her brother’s question. “Because he wants to remain a child a while longer, it’ll pass and he’ll make a fine man, or it won’t, and he’ll make for yet another boring man-child…”

“Perhaps over dinner, later”, Felix cracked a warm smile at his friend. Socrates’ mood changed again at the possibility of the discussion.

“Ah, indeed.” Socrates said. “A bear does not dance with an empty stomach, as they say, and matters of the mind require some food.”

After eating lunch Felix headed over to the Library, where he continued researching and studying the Charon’s Path and its three Trials.

Sometime later Felix was hunched over one of the books from the school’s archives. “Three Riddlers guard the entrance to the Oracle, win and pass. Guess wrong and fight for your life.” Felix took notes before moving on further down the grimy, old page with the fainted ink. “Odysseus favoured cunning, journeys and loyalty above all else. Callirrhoe valued the endurance of constant understanding and the courage of being free. Finally, Andromeda considered discipline of perception and ambition the greatest of traits.”

“Riddlers? Riddle giving statues? Something else? Endurance of learning? Discipline of Perception? Journeys? Three of everything, three Houses, three Founders, three Trials…Endurance, Perception, and Understanding? Odysseus loved journeys so, he must have supplied the idea for the Charon’s Path, and possessing the endurance to traverse it…Callirrhoe added the Trial of Understanding and Andromeda the Trial of Perception.” Felix scribbled furiously on his notepad. “So Endurance Trial is fulfilled both by research and by traversing the Path? Understanding and Perception? I’m missing something…” Putting his quill down on the desk he walked over to the Librarian, placing some books on a shelf.

“Sir, where may I find a map of the land around Acheron River? As well as important landmarks around it? Both Mundane and Wizarding?”

“Dome three, geography section, bookshelf three”, the Librarian replied.

“And are there any historical maps of how it was when the school was founded?”

Not in printed form, but not everything in this school’s in written in paper.”

Felix mumbled a thanks, heading to the third shelf of the geography section in Dome three.

Finding the books he wanted, he started reading up on Acheron’s flora and fauna until it was time for dinner. The next day he researched on important landmarks, the day after that on what he could find on Andromeda and Callirrhoe and their infatuation with Perception and Understanding. And so, the hours became days and the days weeks.

One day in late February Bellerophon entered the library, searching for Felix. He found him in one of the study rooms. Bending over him he was surprised to see him studying up on seventh-year Defense against the Dark Arts wards. “What are you doing studying elemental protection? Our fourth-year stuff’s not enough you like going for seventh-year stuff?”

“It’s a seventh-year challenge and I think I’m onto something, regarding the Trials’ deception”, Felix replied, without lifting his head from his notes.

“Okay, I’ll wait for you to…hey…”, Bellerophon tried to pick up a book from the desk, only to have Felix grab his wrist.

“Touch nothing, I’ve booked this study room since I started researching the Charon’s Path, every book is where it’s supposed to be. What you perceive as chaos is ordered in shapes you can’t see. Touch nothing”, Felix told him, releasing his hand and grasping for his wand to test the new seventh-year ward.

“Uhm…okay?” Bellerophon sat next to Felix, looking over his friend’s shoulder. “Uhm…I think you have it wrong, the Acherontion is down there, by the river delta.”

“Millenia have passed since Odysseus and the others founded Elysion and the Charon’s Path. The river, the land, everything has changed since then. That site is too close, it can’t be…”, Felix paused talking abruptly. “Perhaps you can tell me something that’s been bothering me for some time now”, Felix looked at Bellerophon with eyes pursed together, lost in thought.

“There’s three Founders and three Houses where there ever more? I’ve found some conflicting reports in the later years of the school’s archives.”

“There were four for a short period of time, but the fourth House betrayed the school, resulting in the second destruction and thus was not rebuilt after when the rest of the school was. It was called Erebos and its coat of arms had a…”, Felix’s pupils dilated rapidly at the information.

“Chimera?”

“Nai, holding an asphodel in one of its forepaws. Why is this important?” Bellerophon asked, scratching his chin.

“According to what I’ve found from your Mythology and the school’s archives, the Asphodel fields in Homer’s and Pre-Homer tradition gave way to the Elysium fields later on. The souls of those extraordinary went on to the Elysium fields, while those mediocre in life went on to Hades, the evil went to Tartarus. Erebos was father of Charon, Lethe, Death, Lethargos. Phobos, and so on, Hypnos as well, which wasn’t sleep, but something deeper, different, closer akin to Death…the Chimera is a creature which combines three different animals in one; lion, goat and snake. Three, always three…”, Felix said in almost one breath.

“And this has to do what with Charon’s Path?” Bellerophon was beginning to feel like Socrates was talking to him.

“I don’t know yet. Where was the Fourth House’s tower located? Can’t be the tricastle, it predates it.” Felix asked, as if Bellerophon had not spoken.

“Follow me”, Bellerophon motioned him to follow him, leading them to Dome One, where he pointed a finger outside the dome, to submarine ruins, looking old, but not ancient. “That’s that, or what’s left of it.”

“Under the Quidditch Pitch? Oh! Of course! It’d be symmetrical to the other towers! It’d create symmetry and harmony!”

“What? Who? What?” Bellerophon felt even more lost now.


	11. Chapter 11: The Five Rivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 11: The Five Rivers

“Come with me”, Felix practically bolted for the Library’s exit.

Bellerophon followed him across the corridors and bridges to the Charms’ tower and the brooms’ landing extruding out from the main body, over the Ionian Sea, like half a suspension bridge.

“How do you feel about taking a swim?” Felix asked Bellerophon, retrieving two brooms from the brooms’ cupboard.

“No, thank you?” Bellerophon replied instantly with an eyebrow raised and a “there’s no way in hell” smirk on his lips.

“It’s March, and the Charon’s path is nearly here, and the water could be colder.” Felix replied shoving one of the brooms in his hand, while mounting the other one.

“It’s still February!”

“Fine, it’ll be March in three days. I’m going”, Felix gave a nudge with his legs, lifting the broom off the floor.

“And how, exactly, are we to breathe underwater? The ruins are about fifty meters under!” Bellerophon whined, trying to stave off the inevitable.

“One of those spells I’ve learned from older school years”, Came Felix’s instant reply.

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll be wet, and it won’t have worked”, Felix left the tower behind, heading for the Quidditch pitch.

“Hey, wait up!” Bellerophon mounted his broom, swearing in Hellenic, and took off after Felix.

“Why are we even doing this? For Heaven’s sake…”, Bellerophon breathed out irritated.

“I found a report in the school’s archives…“where Erebos stood, created three with the Méga Aíthousa, that’s the Great Hall right? The tricastle – tríkastro – created three and it was buried between the Archontas’ tower and the Great Hall, but before the school’s destruction the fourth House’s Head took what was buried in the House’s tower and so it was never discovered.” At least that’s what it said if my spell worked okay”, Felix told him.

“Where what was buried?” They flew in the Quidditch pitch and lower, closer to the sea surface.

“The Shadeglass, after it was brought back from China and a clue of what to do once in the Acherontion, I think”, Felix replied, caressing the water with his hand.

“You think it’s there? The Shadeglass I mean.”

“No, it was stolen by Azrail, remember? It was buried then during the German siege of the island and the school. Now, only the clue remains”, Felix shook his head, holding the broom with both hands.

“I hope you’re right, because otherwise we’ll be getting wet over nothing!” Bellerophon shivered from the cold breeze, the sunshine not doing much to warm him up.

“If I’m wrong, the school’s archives are…because I’m pretty sure I’ve perfected the translator spell.”

“How did you even discover that one?” Bellerophon skewed his eyes together.

“Technomagy”, Felix stated dryly.

“What is that?” Bellerophon asked, trying to keep up with Felix.

“The mixing of Muggle technology and science with Magic”, Felix replied, looking around and below.

“That sounds….complicated.”

“Pure-bloods believe we are stronger alone, but they’re dead wrong. We are far more powerful when we combine our two worlds, Charles taught me that”, Felix stopped, hovering over the sea, right in the middle of the Quidditch Pitch.

“Now what?” Bellerophon hoped for a different answer than the one he got.

Felix got his wand out, “Resparagua!” He cast pointing his wand at himself, then repeated with Bellerophon before pushing him off his broom and inside the frigid water.

He jumped in, headfirst.

Diving under the surface he motioned for Bellerophon to follow him. They swam deeper and deeper, with the colour and the light going from a light cyan to a darker blue as they approached the fourth House’s tower ruins sprawled across the sea floor.

Bellerophon tried to say something, with only bubbles coming out of his mouth.

“Search around for a chest, or what can hide things inside”, Felix mouthed motioning with his hands.

“How much time left on the spell?” Bellerophon mouthed back, pointing at his watch with his right hand’s index finger.

“Approximately fifty minutes”, Felix mouthed back, indicating the number with his fingers.

“Lovely, we’re going to die”, Bellerophon started searching.

Felix rolled his eyes going at the other side of the ruins to search.

The two friends started upturning any and every piece of rock, debris and roof tile they felt confident they wouldn’t destabilize anything that’d fall on their heads or fall on them and trap them under. Then they went into every remnant room they could access, every nook and cranny, every crevice they could enter, yet forty-five minutes later they had found nothing to show for.

Felix found Bellerophon shifting through pieces of blown up stained glass and granite columns in the sand. Giving him a nod with his head and a tap on his shoulder he swam a few meters up. Pointing his wand down at the ruined tower he cast Revelio. Bubbles came out of his mouth and a brown umbrella-shaped jet propelled out of Felix’s wand, but nothing happened.

Felix tried Reparifarge, a transfiguration spell undoing other transfigurations, with no discernible results.

Next he cast Deletrius, trying to dissolve any illusions or deception clouds that could be hiding in plain sight, when nothing continued to happen, Felix cast finite incantatem.

Bellerophon pulled on his robes on his shoulder, pointing at his neck and then at the surface.

“Now what?” Bellerophon asked, above the surface.

“This is the full page from the school’s chronicles.; The year is 1939 and Elysion is under siege by the German forces, supported by the Italian navy. Both Muggle and Wizard forces are gathering in Albania for the war that is coming and are unable to aid us. They attacked us first, before declaring war, officially, to Hellada. Their aim is the same as the Persians three thousand years ago, the Shadeglass stored in Acherontion, and the Prophesy Threads stored in our Library. The contents of the Library have been safely moved to an external location and I moved the Ferryman’s vessel in the Traitors’ tower. The kids have all been removed through the naúsodos”, this was the first part archiving the siege, then there’s a bunch of non-important stuff before, “…the school’s been rebuilt, and we’ll need to re-staff it, but the invaders paid dearly for stepping foot on my school’s hallowed halls. We have shown them what it means to fight in our land, even if the walls have been painted red. The school’s been rebuilt, without Erebos, let it forever lie under the waves, to show the way. The war outside the school rages on but come September another year will begin, and students will come here to learn and eventually like all wars before it, this war will end but this school will not.” Yet we found nothing, and seventh-year or not they can’t expect us to dig…”, Bellerophon interrupted his recounting of his research.

“You know, we’re floating in this ever so…frigid water and I’m thinking how I would just KILL to be inside, dry by a fireplace nice and warm with a hot cup of coffee…”, Bellerophon tried to maintain a calm, sarcastically smiley voice so as to not explode on his friend, yet declare his unhappiness as to his current, wet and freezing, state. “It is okay if you don’t succeed in the Charon’s Path, you know why? We are not Seventh-year!”

“I did not join to fail.”

Bellerophon mounted his broom, getting out of the water. “naúsodos, naús doesn’t mean water in ancient Hellenic, it means ship or navy and odos means street or way, so combined, waterway? Navyway? From what I remember my dad telling me it was a means of travelling not dissimilar to apparition only through the use of large bodies of water”, Bellerophon told Felix as he climbed on his broom. “And you also have a mistake there.”

“Huh? What?”

“It’s not “in” the traitor’s tower, it’s…“the Ferryman’s vessel is…uh what’s the word, not in, or on, or about….uh…”in” so in Hellenic can also be used as “a medium””, Bellerophon tried to explain.

“Medium? As in fortune foretelling?” Felix asked, as they headed back to the Brooms’ landing in the Charms’ tower.

“No, medium as in to convey or transfer something, like mouths are a medium of sound through voice…or something like that.”

“How can a tower convey the Shadeglass or whatever the clue is?”

“I don’t know…can we please go now? I can see pneumonia in our future.”

“We are already flying to the tower…”

“I can feel muscles shivering I didn’t know I had! I’ll whine!”

“Yeah, because you don’t the rest of it…”

“I can swear at you…but you been hanging around Socrates and that Sea Guardian too much, and I have an intense feeling it won’t go well…for me if I do.”

“That is a valid assessment, as Socrates would say.”

They flew back to the Charms’ tower where Felix used a spell to dry them both up.

“Cool spell! Why am I still shivering though…”, Bellerophon sighed. “I can feel me getting sick”, they flew back to the tower in silence.

“I know more, and I think you’re brilliant and can’t understand why you are so keen on believing otherwise?” Felix asked Bellerophon, on the brooms’ landing.

“I don’t like studying”, Bellerophon answered short.

“And I don’t like the idea of having to fight Azrail, yet we both know “liking” has nothing to do with it. Why are you so underplaying what you are really capable of? Socrates may be brilliant at ideas and words, but you can be unmatched at breaking curses and inspiring people.”

“That’s…thank you. If I study, if you are going after the Shadeglass…I must fight Sandra one day, I know I must, will you fight Azrail?” Bellerophon asked making eye contact.

“I can’t fight him.”

“Can’t or won’t.”

“What’s the difference?”

“When you understand the difference, let me know”, Bellerophon left leaving the broom on the suspended floor.

Felix placed the two brooms in the cupboard before just standing there between the two grey chains holding the floor outside the tower to the exterior wall, he stood there gazing at the sea and the horizon.

“Did I come here for -all- the wrong reasons?” Felix stayed there staring at the sea for a few minutes.

The next day Felix woke up with a severe cold and Bellerophon with full-blown pneumonia.

Socrates and the others helped them to the Infirmary.

“Typical, you get a cold and I get the pneumonia…”, Bellerophon tried to laugh amidst coughing, lying on one of the Infirmary beds as Elysion’s nurse worked on him.

“I’m suffering as well, if that’s any consolation?” Felix tried not to sound sarcastic.

“I’m convulsing and shivering in places I honestly didn’t want to know could shiver, I have a fever high enough to boil eggs on my forehead and I feel like I’m about to cough my lungs out!

“You’ll both be fine, bunch of teenage drama queens”, Charilaos Ethelotiflos, Elysion’s nurse told them, patting Bellerophon on the shoulder.

“Your bed manners thingy aren’t what they should be, I see…”, Felix told the man, with a mischievous smile.

“So, sue me…oh, wait…”, Mr. Ethelotiflos replied, walking over to his bed where he sat and casting some healing spells at his chest, throat and nose before shoving a pewter glass in his hands. “Drink this.”

“Much complaining from one as learned to pain and fighting as you, Bellerophon son of Aristides Atreos”, Socrates told Bellerophon, sitting next to Felix.

“I have never heard anyone, before, tell anyone to shut up their whining as gracefully as you just did, brother”, Lydia laughed, sitting on Felix’s other side.

“Indeed, and thankfully I am good with both healing and sleeping draughts as you are with words, young Atalian”, Elysion’s nurse’s lips cracked to a self-confident smirk as he nodded their attention to Bellerophon lightly snoring behind him. “Aetomachos twins, I will bid you leave now, visiting hours are over”, the Nurse told them before leaving for his other two patients in the Infirmary.

“Socrates, one thing before you leave. How can a building, or the ruins of one, be the or a medium of the Shadeglass or a clue for Charon’s Path?” Felix asked him, as Socrates and Lydia stood up.

“An interesting question. I will endeavour to provide you an answer equal to the challenge you’ve presented to me”, Felix looked weirdly.

“That’s his way of saying he’ll find the answer to your question and thanking you for the opportunity to help you in your effort to cross the Charon’s Path successfully…I think”, Lydia shrugged cracking a grin.

“I could clarify the doubt created by the means of my answer to your query, yet some mystery’s nice for the soul. Feel better my friends”, Socrates turned and pressing his hands behind his back he left.

Felix was discharged that evening while Bellerophon the morning after.

“What are we doing here? In your message you said you have the answer to my question?” Felix arrived on the brooms’ landing, to find Socrates waiting for him there, looking over the horizon.

“You would come here, after you would have gotten your answer”, Socrates pressed his hands’ fingers touching each other, between his sternum and belly.

“You know what the clue is? How a building can act as a medium?” Felix was more surprised by the speed in which Socrates found the answer to his question, rather than Socrates having found the answer.

“The clue is the answer. A train of thought that eludes one reading the passage from the school’s archives if one does not think beyond them.”

“You lost me…”, Felix scratched his head, with no idea of what Socrates meant.

“I tried many approaches to providing an adequate answer to your question. Illusion magic, transfiguration, potion, philosophical avenues…and so on, but the answers only became more and more complex and less possible. So, I went to the library and read the passages from your research, myself.”

“Wait, how do you?...”

“We are in the same House it was not exactly difficult to find it. What’s important is for me to provide you with information you do not have. Elysion’s Archon at the time was a wizard called Aggelos Doukas, he was one of the most cunning and powerful wizards ever to come out of Elysion or Hellada. He died during the siege but if you see or read what he did during the siege…incredible and awe-inspiring magic, he caused severe damage to the Italian navy and German occupation force, to the point they destroyed the school rather than invade it in the end just so they’d kill him and stop him from sinking any more of their metal floating cages. But, I digress, He left a letter to whoever would succeed him and rebuild the school.

“The clue becomes apparent when you read both passages together. The Traitor’s tower -working as a medium- will show you”, Socrates finished talking, with a look about his face as if the answer should now be obvious to Felix.

“Show me what? We searched and found nothing”, Felix shrugged.

“No, you’re thinking to small and to narrow. Nothing was hidden in or on the tower, the tower is the clue.”

“How?” Felix brought his hands palms up for a moment, having no clue of what Socrates meant or how that could be possible.

“If the tower stood, what would you have done to see all of it?” Socrates tapped his index fingers together several times.

“I’d go outside? Near a window?”

“You’d only see a small portion of it from a window and a slightly larger portion of it from “outside”, how can you see the whole building?”

“From above?” Felix asked, catching on to the path Socrates was trying to point him at.

“Correct, only this building no longer stands, it lies beneath the waves.”

“Accio broom!” A broom came flying out of the cupboard and right into his open hand. He mounted it with swift moves, kicking off from the suspended floor.

“And thus, the easiest solution is the correct one, even if not as easily discoverable at first”, Socrates announced, sounding very pleased with himself.

Felix flew to the center of the Quidditch pitch, cast the breathing spell and dove in the sea. Ten minutes later he was back on the brooms’ landing.

“ΘΓ, ΙΙΙ, 1. What does that mean? The ruins of the tower were arranged in such a way to show that, but what does it mean?” Felix asked Socrates, drying himself up.

“The school’s been destroyed thrice. I would wager a good guess Θ means Θόλος or dome in English. The Γ is three as ancient Hellenes used letters as numbers as well, III is from Roman times, and 1 is from Arabic or Ottoman times. So, while they don’t correspond with the three times the school was raised to the ground exactly, they do match with three quite important shifts in not just Elysion’s history but Hellada’s’ as well. Which leads me to the conclusion your answer lies in the first book of the third shelf of Dome three in the library, which not so randomly is the shelf with historical books and maps”, Socrates explained.

“How on Earth was I even supposed to know all of this?” Felix asked, placing the broom back in the cupboard.

“You were not. You are neither a child of this country nor a permanent student of this school or versed in Historical and Mythological aspects of Hellada or Elysion. Charon’s Path is meant for us, for the students of Elysion. Understanding, Endurance and Perspective. Three key aspects of our School’s Founders and they don’t start or stop with Charon’s Path. You must always have the endurance to understand more and reshape your Perspective. The Trials don’t start when you go to Acheron’s mouth and they don’t stop after. They start when you are sorted into your House, in the first day of your first year and they end when you die, hopefully from old age. My ancestors had a nice proverb which best explains this, “Γηράσκω δ’ αιεί πολλά διδασκόμενος”, loosely translated means “I learn a lot despite growing older”, Socrates replied.

“How do you know all of this stuff?” Bellerophon’s voice came ascending the stairs, startling them.

“How do you not? You are more than able to”, Socrates replied turning around.

“You are the second person to tell me that”, Bellerophon said, looking at Felix.

“Good.”

“Where are you two going?” Felix told Bellerophon a summary of the last half hour, and what he had found in his second dive.

Twenty minutes later they entered the library, a minute later they were in Dome three, shelf three.

Lydia saw them entering the library, placed the book she had been reading down and followed them.

Felix plucked a black and red leather-bound book out of the shelf, the title read “Elysion’s History: Erebos”. Smacking the cover once to remove the dust he opened it to page three of chapter three.

“Why did you open it in that page?” Socrates asked, sounding intrigued.

“Seven, Dome three, shelf three, book one equals seven. Chapter three, page three, paragraph one. I’m evolving my Perspective…I think”, Felix explained, tracing his hand over the page, after casting the translator spell.

“Why would this be here? A poem from Pluto’s Hypnos? That should be in a different book, being a poem from Acherontas’ Mythology”, Lydia pondered aloud.

“Erebos was Charon’s father, if the Shadeglass is his vessel…it makes sense, no? A House named after the father of Charon, Charon’s Path, a clue for it and the vessel…”, Felix explained his reasoning, before reading the verses of the poem out loud.

Dock your ship at Acheron’s edge  
To venture in Hades’ spider-webbed abode

There where Five Rivers meet  
Where Phlegethon meets Kokytus  
And Lethe join Acheron

Use the vessel to traverse beyond the veiled gates  
And the rock where four thundering rivers meet, start your journey there.

“Not how I remember Homer’s verses, but he was a Mundane…this is written by Callirrhoe”, Socrates said looking at the book.


	12. Chapter 12: The Room of Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 12: The Room of Thoughts

“How do you know? Does this mean she was Homer?” Felix said.

“I’ve read these verses before in her book called “Callirrhoe’s Anorthosis””, Socrates replied, pausing for a moment, with a rub of his chin. “Or was it “Callirrhoe’s Anaktisi”? Doesn’t matter, she’s not Homer, but she likely inspired him, and his epics.”

“What do I do with this clue, though?”

“Maybe it’s something that helps us…you in the Path?” Bellerophon shrugged.

“My father once told me this for Charon’s Path. Every clue, every piece of information you will find is not to help you, it is to enable you to endure more, understand better and change your perspective. It’s not a treasure hunt, students used to die in the Path in the years of yore when the Founders lived. Rites of passage means you may not survive to adulthood, but if you do, you have the right to be an adult””, Socrates said, leaning against the bookshelf.

“It’s a pity you’re not going to be here on May, you’d look nice in navy blue, white and red dance outfit. The Founder’s ball is amazing under the starlight in the Great Hall, and since we’re fourth years we can go from this year on”, Lydia told Felix, looking at his eyes.

“I’ve not been to a ball before, pity I’ll be back in Hogwarts by then”, Felix said back.

“Yeah…I’ve got homework to do, I’ll catch up with you guys later”, she said and left with a wave of her hand.

“What? You’re staring at me, again”, Felix told Bellerophon who was looking at him all frustrated and confused.

“You…she…”, Bellerophon gave a deep sigh, closing his eyes.

“I believe Bellerophon is correct in believing my sister was asking you out just now”, Socrates told Felix in his usual matter-of-fact way.

“She was! Hottest girl in our class asked you out and it completely flew over your head!” Bellerophon exploded silently.

“Girls…confound me”, Felix replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Me two…”, Bellerophon said.

“Me three”, Socrates agreed.

“Marios should give you pointers”, Bellerophon chuckled.

“No, this is one voyage I want to commit to on my own”, Felix shook his head.

Bellerophon looked back down at the open book in Felix’s hands, his face darkening. “Time passes by quickly; the Path is in two weeks and I feel like it’s still September.”

“Time does pass quickly, I need help. I have prepared and researched extensively, yet I feel like I’m missing something. Do you guys have a room of requirement in this school?” Felix asked his friends.

“Room of what now?” Bellerophon looked at him weird.

“Hidden room that is revealed by standing near it and thinking clearly what you need of it”, Felix explained.

“I don’t know anything like that, no. Then again this school’s been damaged, besieged and repaired more times than I care to remember….so, I don’t know”, Bellerophon said back.

“My father may know I can ask him if you want?”

“It’d take too long to hear back, no need I just wanted to recap what I have learned, have you all hear it and tell me what I may be missing”, Felix told Socrates, shaking his head and closing the book.

“We can book the room of thoughts for half a day or something”, Marios said as Felix placed the book back in its place in the bookshelf.

“Room of thoughts?” Felix looked back at him with his eyebrows raised.

“It’s a room in Dome Two in the library, fifth and seventh years use it usually for their A’s and Ω’s exams preparation. It’s completely soundproof, can’t hear what goes on outside or what goes on in from the outside”, Marios told Felix.

“Cool, let’s go.”

“Not that easy, has to be booked days in advance”, Socrates shook his head.

Felix motioned them to follow him, walking over to the Librarian’s desk. “Hello sir, I’d like to book the room of thoughts, please.”

The Librarian opened a book on his left, in his very tidy desk where everything was placed in equal distance from each other item, looking inside it. “I have two days free next week.”

“The half day of the first day and the full second day, please”, Felix said.

“Done. Tuesday half day, Wednesday full day”, the Librarian confirmed, writing it down on the book, closing it and placing it neatly back in its place.

“Thank you sir”, Felix nodded.

“Oh, how I wish our students were as polite”, the man said under his breath.

“Aaaww but if we were, who would you have to hate, sir?” Bellerophon laughed.

“I hate none of you, Mr. Atreos. I only demand a certain level of decorum in my Library and mutual respect to and from anyone who’s using the books stored here to increase their knowledge and understanding of our world and whatever else”, the man told him in a disappointed voice.

Bellerophon opened his mouth to reply a couple of times, but in the end he resorted to a nod before turning around and leaving.

As the week’s days passed by Elysion’s students were increasingly agitated, the younger years for the incoming Easter vacations, the later years for the incoming Challenge that lay ahead.

Tuesday arrived and Felix made his way to the room of thoughts, after classes’ end.

The room’s decour was very simplified, with naked dark blue walls, a central ceiling light with nothing exceptional about it and a table with several chairs in the center of the elliptical-shaped room.

His friends taking their seats around and opposite him he stood up, taking his notes out of his backpack and arranging them in order of discovery.

“This is unorthodox to say the least, Charon’s Path is meant to be discovery of self. But, I must say I’m liking this”, Marios rubbed his hands together, grinning wide.

“I have been mailing my mum and my friends from Hogwarts more often since after Christmas, and yet they do not know what I am about to tell you…” Felix sat down, taking a breath. “I thought I had come here to…help me get over my devastation, my desolation, my grief. It was a lie, a lie I told myself. I left Hogwarts thinking I deserved to be alone, that I deserved no friends, no family, no love…I don’t want to be alone anymore. Will you, my Elysion friends help me uncover what I’m missing in my research?” Felix crossed his fingers together, feeling awkward and afraid of a possible rejection from his newfound friends.

Socrates, Lydia, Bellerophon, Euredeke and Marios nodded with smiles on their faces.

Felix smiled back. “Okay, so here’s what I’ve found, about Elysion’s mythology and history that may help understand the three Trials”, for the next few hours until it was time for dinner and sleep they read his research notes and helped cover what gaps he may have had.

The next day he was in the room of thoughts, again. This time alone. Placing his backpack on the floor he looked around the dark blue room.

“I felt it yesterday, this room’s different. The whole library is a giant study room, why have a “quiet” room in addition? Room of thoughts…”, Felix locked the door and sat down, closing his eyes and lowering all of his mental defenses, emptying his mind.

Two seconds later he felt it, a strange, foreign entity encroaching on his consciousness, touching it with hesitant probes.

“Who…what are you?” Felix asked, opening his eyes. There was nothing visible in the room, yet everything seemed different, blurry.

In reply he saw only one image, in his mind. Elysion from a distance, with the sun gloriously bathing it in light.

“You are the school?” Felix asked hesitantly.

He saw the school, but it was different than how it was now. Looked older, with square towers and different building materials. Then the emblems of the three houses flashed above it, forming the school’s emblem with it all vanishing and replaced by the living portraits of two witches and a wizard. All three smiling.

“No, not the school. You are the…thoughts of the three founders?”

A picture formed in his mind, glass fragments in a pitch-black background. Yet the fragments shone bright and clear.

“Bits and pieces of them”, Felix said aloud. “Room of thoughts, this is its true function isn’t it? And not everyone discovers it…just like not everyone will complete the Charon’s Path.”

In reply he saw Charles’ face smiling a nod back at him.

Felix swallowed hard, he craved to be able to hug his cousin, feel him in his arms and tell him just how he missed him.

“Who am I?” Felix fired the next question.

After a second of silence he saw a boy, he looked to be no older than six or seven years of age, he lay on a sofa in a tormented state, crying and arching his back on the furniture, mumbling words only he could hear or understand. The sofa with the boy showed in bright light while the rest of the background lay in darkness. His long, black locks covered most of his face, yet tears could be seen streaking down his rosy cheeks,

In the blink of an eye the boy and the sofa were replaced by the same threatening boy he had seen the boggart shapeshift into. His eyes and hair enveloped in fire his lips curved in a sadistic smirk. “You are not Azrail, you are…me. The thing I’m most afraid of is not Azrail, it’s me, what monster I am within, what I am capable of”, Felix clenched his fists in rising anger.

“Lost, but not forgotten. Avada mé féin”, the boy replied, standing there, hair waving in a non-existing breeze.

“Destroy…self?”

The two boys standing side by side, Felix saw himself as he was now walking up to them and hugging them close, with all three becoming one being of light which transformed into a tree, sprouting powerful from the soil beneath, roots and branches growing until they touched in a perfect 8.

“I don’t understand...I used to be someone else and now I’m someone else?”

The next image showed the Book of Leaves opening, its pages glowing a silver glow with the letters changing and shifting, as Felix remembered it, a silver glass engraved with various runes and three vague human shapes with a silver liquid appeared over it. The glass tilted over spilling its contents before both vanished in black mist.

“I don’t understand…”, Felix remained silent for a moment. “Who was I before my seventh years of age?”

No picture came in reply, in his mind. Only black void.

“Nothing? I was no one? Why do I not remember anything before then?” Felix asked, frustrated and confused.

The image of the Book and the silver chalice showed again.

“I don’t understand that…what lies beyond the Veil? Beyond Death?”

Again, no picture appeared in his mind, only black void.

“Is there a way to find out…other than dying I mean?”

“The silver chalice appeared again, changing to black-iron with skulls carved on it, with a different liquid inside, this one pitch-black, as if no light could avoid it.

“So, that’s what the Shadeglass looks like? And how can it teach me what is after Death? Beyond the Veil?”

The Shadeglass tilted over emptying its contents.

“What is the use of the Book of Leaves?”

The images he had seen when he had touched the Book of Leaves in his second year appeared again, followed by the ones he had just seen moments again.

“I’ve seen those again, but I don’t know what they mean”, Felix rubbed his eyes in increasing confusion.

Felix continued his questions towards the room of thoughts for the rest of the day, changing subjects in a journey of discovery.

He found his friends eating dinner in the Great Hall.

“Do you know the room’s true purpose?” He asked them, but Socrates more specifically.

“Not for study?” Socrates asked, his attention peaked by the possibility of something he did not know.

“In a library why have a room for quiet study? The whole library is a quiet place full of study rooms, why have a “room of thoughts”?” Felix asked him. “Book it solo, go in there on your own, each of you and empty your minds. Open them to what’s in there, lower your defenses and you’ll find out why it’s called as it is.”

“You seem…changed by the experience, most intriguing”, Felix could see the cogs working inside Socrates’ mind. It would not be long before he tested it out.

“I don’t know about changed, but it was certainly…educating”, Felix nodded, serving himself food from the plates on the Wonderers’ table.

“All the Seventh-years are talking of is the Charon’s Path next week, they’d have preferred it if it was in June as usual”, Lydia said.

“And after that I return to Hogwarts. I’m going to miss you all”, Felix replied, looking sad.

“And we’ll miss you as well”, Bellerophon nodded.


	13. Chapter 13: Charon’s Path: In Acheron’s lands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 13: Charon’s Path: In Acheron’s lands

A week later with the sun still hiding beyond the mountain to the east Felix woke up, shooting up from his bed like a rocket.

Putting on the clothes he had set aside the previous night, he finalized preparing his and Bellerophon’s backpacks and supplies.

“Bellerophon, wake up. It’s time”, he woke up his friend, gently and as quietly as he could so as to not wake up the others in the dorm.

“I’m up, I slept last night wearing my clothes. Let’s go do this thing!” Bellerophon exclaimed in a whispering voice.

“I thought you said we didn’t have to finish it?” Felix teased him, giving him his backpack and placing his on his shoulders.

“You changed my mind with your single-minded devotion and determination to the task, it is infectious”, Bellerophon chuckled as they descended the stairs to the common room.

“I’ve been called worse things I guess, thanks”, Socrates, Lydia, Euredeke and Marios waited for them in the common room.

“You guys didn’t have to wake up”, Felix smiled.

“Yes, we did”, Socrates walked closer. “Go forth Felix Burton and claim your rite of passage, come back a man”, Socrates gave Felix his right hand shaking it with Felix’s opposite arm as was custom, with them placing their free palms on top of the shaking hands.

“What he said”, Marios shook his hand. Lydia and Euredeke each gave him a hug.

“Thank you all. I’ll see you in three days”, Felix waved at them, descending the stairs of the common room to the tricastle’s main chamber.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Bellerophon walked across the bridge from the tricastle to the rest of the school, following Felix and walking next to him.

The enchanted talking suits of armour still gave him the creeps as they walked by them. “Yeah, brooms’ landing.”

“How do you know? Why not the port?”

“We won’t be taking the frigate for less than one seventh of the school’s total students population. And since not everyone can apparate, it makes sense”, Felix replied.

They walked to the brooms’ landing in the Charms tower, arriving half an hour earlier than everyone else, including Archon Atreos and the Professors.

Archon Atreos and the four Professors, of Potions, transfiguration, charms and Defense against the Dark arts arrived fifteen minutes later and begun taking the brooms out from the cupboard and enchanting them. The rest of the students arriving after.

“Now, that we’re all here. To finish the Charon’s Path there’s three ways; Find the Oracle and receive your conversation from her, be it words of wisdom or prophesy. Send red sparks up high at any time and a Professor will come pick you up. And third whoever has not found the Oracle and received his conversation at seventy-two hours and one second will have failed and will be picked up and returned to Elysion. If you prepared the previous months and years you should have no problem completing the Trials. Now, in case you find Mundanes along the river, avoid anything magical in their presence, if it can’t be avoided send yellow sparks and since there’s no Ministry I’ll come and obliviate who I must. Finally, the brooms in front of you are enchanted to take you to your starting locations, ride them when you’re ready and good luck”, Archon Atreos told them after they were all gathered around him and the four Professors.

“Interesting”, Felix mumbled under his breath. “Three of everything and yet four Professors? One’s not required…but which one?” He looked over at Bellerophon who nodded. With a breath they rode their brooms which took off immediately.

Eight hours of nonstop flying later they landed near a church to the south of Acheron’s estuary.

“Delta swamps, lovely”, Bellerophon whined stretching his hands above his head.

“We’ll be out of here soon”, Felix stretched before taking out his holophone. “What? No one said anything about not being allowed to use Muggle tech, and we’re not in Elysion anymore so it’s not being jammed or prevented from working by school’s wards and so on”, Felix cracked an impish grin. “Follow me.”

Felix took them through the estuary marshlands of reeds and rye mud and water pools. Two hours later and after passing through the modern Muggle village of Ammoudia with its fishing blue and white fishing vessels all along the river’s banks, they stood outside the ruins of the Necromancy Oracle building at Mesopotamos.

The remnants of a medieval Orthodox Christian church stood beside the foundation ruins of what once was the Acherontion.

“Even the non-Mundane part of it is in complete ruins”, Bellerophon said exiting the cylindrical underground chamber.

“We’ve only walked two hours or so, and yet we have three days ahead of us until the Path’s time is concluded. This ain’t it, we must go further inland, we’ll follow the river across the Acheron canyon and just north of threecastle, where the Hades’ doors landmark lies”, Felix told him placing the backpack back on his shoulders.

“Tricastle? We are not going to Elysion’s entrance”, Bellerophon placed his backpack on his shoulders, with some uncertainty.

“Threecastle, in ancient times there used to be a citadel-acropolis and a temple there, nothing remains now, but back then pilgrims to the Oracle would go there, offer sacrifice and start their journey to the Oracle, I don’t think they were coming down here for that”, Felix elaborated taking a stride towards the river in the south. Bellerophon followed him making conversation, they had to pass the time somehow. The mountains in the north east with their snow-caped peaks appeared mysterious and foreboding. The mist shrouding them in a dark blue grey hue.

“But why there? Threecastle?” Bellerophon asked some time later, as they were walking along the muddy grass shores of the river, where farmlands mixed with the river ecosystem.

“Three of everything, the same people who founded Elysion did this, I found the historical map I was looking for, only it wasn’t printed, I just sat in the Great Hall and waited until the enchantments showed me it. They do, you know. They show how the Acheron delta, lands and river were four thousand years ago, and the Acherontion moved along with the time. Originally it was elsewhere, near the tríkastro or threecastle. In case you haven’t noticed or figured it out yet, Elysion’s founders are or were the witches and wizard known as “The Old Gods”, or three of them at least. And along with your school they created the mythology and culture in two different countries”, Felix told Bellerophon following the river’s edge, putting aside low-lying willow branches and sidestepping shrubs.

“How? I mean go…”, Bellerophon started saying, following in Felix’s footsteps. The sun rose above them, casting reflections onto the river’s surface.

“The entities we know as Old Gods were flesh and bones witches and wizards like you and me, they lived thousands of years ago and reached a level of understanding of the natural world and magic I doubt anyone else has since. I don’t know how they did it but every bit of research I’ve found says as much. Their discoveries and understanding of magic helped create Britain’s lore and mythology and then they travelled south where they did the same to Hellada and her mythology and culture”, Felix interrupted him.

“Okay, we’ll ask Socrates when we get back”, Bellerophon didn’t want to doubt what Felix was telling him, but on the other side it sounded like a thoroughly outlandish idea.

“He and the Room of thoughts gave me the idea”, Felix replied jumping across a smaller stream leading to the river.

Three hours later, in a patch of agricultural land by the river’s edge they sat on two large boulders. “You’ve packed food? You’ve thought of everything”, Bellerophon commented seeing Felix retrieve two sandwiches from his backpack.

“I packed some rations, I did not think of everything”, Felix replied, eating his tuna and lettuce sandwich. “It’s so calm here, so nice.”

“Both Mundanes and Wizard folk come for trekking and river kayaking around these parts, it is beautiful”, Bellerophon nodded consuming his cheese and ham sandwich.

“The sun is to our left”, Felix noted looking up at the bright orb.

“Hm?” Bellerophon failed to understand the importance of it.

“Nothing let’s finish up and go”, Felix replied dusting off crumbs from his lap.

Three hours later, Felix closed his holophone, putting it in his pocket. “We’re going in circles and whatever they’ve done – the Professors- it’s also confusing Muggle tech”, Felix announced standing still, and looking about for signs of deception.

“I don’t think so…” Bellerophon shrugged feeling tired.

“Keep your eyes on your shadow, it changes every hour and a half from left to right casting. It should change in…”, Felix took a peek at his watch. “…ten minutes.”

They stood there for ten minutes, feeling the light breeze on their hair and skin until Bellerophon released a sound of surprise and astonishment. “Holy heck! It did happen! The sun doesn’t move like that! Now, what?”

“Revelio”, Felix waved his wand around causing the environment around them to flicker and alter. Now the river’s bank was to their left instead of to their right, trees and shrubs changing places. “Okay, this was way too easy…some concealment illusions will shatter if you disturb them, violently. Bombarda!” Felix cast it at a rock some twenty meters away from them, blasting it to pieces. The air around them shivered like a digital glitch in a movie.

“Holy heck!” Bellerophon exclaimed.

“Hey, my Défteros, how do you feel about blasting some rocks to pieces?” Felix asked with a grin.

“I can’t, remember?” Bellerophon replied, disappointed he couldn’t join in the fun.

“Right…bombarda!” Felix kept blasting rocks and sending loud explosions up in the sky in a spherical pattern around them until the very atmosphere around them cracked and shattered like glass, the spell failing to maintain cohesion. The shards of glass turned to tendrils of mist falling on them.

“And now we’re wet…” Bellerophon whined. “Let’s go before Mundanes come looking for the source of the explosions.”

“Right, we lost time with this perception illusion, we need to go north-east”, Felix shouldered his backpack and started walking again.

The river and the vegetation begun to change as they headed deeper inland. The river became shallower yet darker in colour and as dusk approached they started to leave the irrigated agricultural land behind them, heading in a willow and oak forest with ferns and other low-lying vines and shrubs.

“What kind of predators are we likely to meet? Because we’ll soon have to find shelter for the night”, Bellerophon wondered aloud.

“We do need to make camp for the night, soon”, Felix affirmed.

“We could always try and go rent a room in a Mundane’s hotel in one of the nearby villages or something”, Bellerophon shrugged.

“Right, two fourteen-year olds walk into a Muggle hotel and ask for a room, without any adult parents around. What is likelier to happen? We get a room and pay for it with non-Muggle Galleons, or we end up sending yellow sparks for your father to sweep in and obliviate a bunch of people?” Felix looked at him with a smirk.

“Or, we can find a boulder to sleep on…”, Bellerophon sighed.

“Trial of Endurance, we will endure this, it’s one, or two at the most nights, it’s not the end of the world”, Bellerophon gave him a pat on his shoulder and continued his stride, now in search of a good place to rest for the night.

“This looks promising”, Felix pointed at a willow tree half an hour later, it stood near the river’s edge, with a blanket of dry leaves under it and a large hollow in its trunk.

“Fetch some firewood and I’ll conceal us from any Muggle eyes during the night”, Felix got his wand out as Bellerophon started looking around for any fallen twigs and branches that’d be dry enough to burn.

“How do you know all these spells?” Bellerophon asked, bending over and stacking the branches under his left armpit and arm.

“I’ve been in one library or another for four years now, even more so this year what with trying to drown my grief and Charon’s path. It’s some incantations and wand motions, not all that impossible to learn if one puts one’s mind on it”, Felix shrugged his shoulders and continued placing protective and concealing wards around their willow tree.

Retrieving all the wood he could carry, Bellerophon placed them on a pyramidical stack on the ground with stones around it, then pointed his wand at them. “Incendio!”

He sat cross-legged next to the fire, waiting for Felix to finish.

Placing all the protective and concealing spells he knew, Felix sat by the fire retrieving two bottles of chocolate milk and an assortment of raw and cooked food from his backpack. Ham, eggs, turkey jerky some of that Hellenic yellow hard cheese he so liked, Graviera they called it, and so on.

“Someone came prepared, nice!” Bellerophon took hold of what Felix gave him, placing the raw bits on the fire.

“There’s one more ration in your backpack, after that we’ll need to improvise.”

“We can’t exactly hunt, and we don’t have fishing rods”, Bellerophon replied.

Felix took hold of his wand, pointing it at a nearby shrub. “Sectusempra!” The shrub was shredded to pieces. “Fishing rod? What fishing rod? Plus, I have an ace up my sleeve if need be.” He said with an impish look on his face.

“Should I be worried?” Bellerophon looked at him over the corner of his eye, as he ate a piece of turkey jerky.

“Not unless you’re a fish or hare”, Felix tried to maintain a serious face.

“Cute…”, being as hungry as they were they finished eating in relative silence, eating fast, wolfing down their food with as minimal chewing and effort as they could.

“I’m exhausted. Goodnight, mate”, Bellerophon said lying on his side, in a fetus position by the fire.

“Kaliníchta file”, Felix replied lying on his back, gazing up on the starry night between the willow’s downwards curved branches swaying in the light night gust of wind until sleep overtook him.


	14. Chapter 14: One Riddle, Two Riddles, Three Riddles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 14: One Riddle, Two Riddles, Three Riddles

Felix woke up to the river bathed in golden light from the break of dawn. Stretching and rubbing the sleep from his eyes he gazed up at the dark blue sky without a cloud to be seen.

Completing what nature demanded of him in the river’s edge he returned back under the willow, sitting on his blanket of leaves waiting for Bellerophon to wake up.

“It’s so peaceful here”, he contemplated under his breath. “How I wish I could feel that inside me…I feel I know what I must do, have to do, yet I can’t…won’t.” He gave a soft sigh. “The surface’s been disturbed though, no going back now”, he closed his eyes enjoying the sound of the leaves waving on the breeze and the water flowing.

Half an hour later with Bellerophon awake they cleaned up, throwing the remnants of the fire in the river and Felix dismantled the protective wards, before continuing their journey to the river’s springs.

Walking through an increasingly dense forest for four hours they arrived at the Muggle village of Gliki, the last village they’d see before entering the Acheron canyon.

They entered it crossing a stone arched bridge walking on the cobblestone streets with the one or two storied houses with the usual red ceramic tiled roofs on either side until they reached the village’s central square, with a church in it flying a white and blue flag, which Felix supposed was Hellada’s and a second fully yellow one with a two headed eagle on it.

“They know the royal roq?” Felix asked surprised.

“Huh? Wh…oh no, that’s a symbol of power for Mundanes, and of something in their ancient history which serves as the symbol of their religious order or something, I forget now, dad explained it to me some years ago”, Bellerophon explained, following Felix’s eyes to the flag of the Patriarchy of Constantinople.

“Interesting, do you have any Muggle money?” Felix asked him, seeing a general store, or at least he thought that’s what it was based on the benches of fresh produce outside it.

“Why did it take us four hours to get here? According to the maps information in the holophone it should have taken us half that”, Bellerophon said, not having heard his question, his face now bent over his phone.

Felix thought on it for a moment, then his pupils dilated in recognition. “Sneaky little…two curses in the price of one. It’s making us slow slower or struggle more or something…”

“Lovely, how do you break it?” Bellerophon asked, pocketing his phone.

“I…don’t know. Let’s grab something to eat, I’m famished.”

“You’re not going to Sectusempra a fish, are you?” Bellerophon teased him, watching Muggles go about their business, one or two eyeing them weird.

“I was going to suggest we go to a tavern or something, but sure I can, if you want me to”, Felix teased him back.

“Jerk! I say we grab something from the grocery store instead, like you said two teenage boys sitting alone in a tavern would raise eyebrows”, Bellerophon pointed at the store Felix had seen earlier, taking a step towards it.

“There’s that, you have any Muggle money? I don’t even know what they look like in this country”, Felix followed him.

Bellerophon cracked a wide grin. “I have my holophone, and it can make payments.”

“Cool beans.”

“I like that expression”, Bellerophon laughed.

Grabbing some apples and basic provisions for a couple meals, Bellerophon paid for it all by scanning his phone’s back on a machine on the tiller’s bench.

Felix put them in their two backpacks, while Bellerophon spoke to the store owner, a middle-aged beefy black-haired woman with angry-looking eyes and facial hair in places she shouldn’t have any.

Leaving the store Felix walked next to Bellerophon, so that he could speak without speaking loudly. “What did she want?”

“She didn’t recognize us and was asking where are our parents, we should hurry out of here. Where are we going?” Bellerophon replied, quickening his stride.

“Off road, we’ll continue to follow the river and make camp at its banks come night, like yesternight. We shouldn’t see any more Muggle civilization again”, Felix replied walking faster himself.

“There’s no more agricultural lands past this point, it’s all national park land and mountain wildlands, do you know what predators exist out here?” Bellerophon asked.

“Wolves, bears, dragons and chimeras”, Felix told him. “Death by Dragon sounds almost pleasant compared to death by Azrail.”

They were at the village’s edge and just inside a thicket of oak and olive trees, when they heard someone calling out to them from behind them. “Crap, and we were so close”, Bellerophon whispered, turning around to see a police officer approaching them.

“You boys, where are your parents?” The officer asked, hands in his jacket pockets. “What are your names and surnames?”

Bellerophon tried to talk to him, get him to leave them be, when the police officer held Bellerophon’s arm by his elbow, ordering them in Hellenic to follow him to the precinct.

Felix drew his wand in a blink, “Incarcerus!” Thorny vines sprouted from the soil beneath the police officer’s feet, wrapping themselves around him, pinning him down, forcing him to lay down. Felix then sent yellow sparks up in the air. “Let’s go, your father will obliviate him”, Felix told Bellerophon and hiding his wand back inside his robes started walking away.

Fifteen minutes of walking along the pebbled shores of the river later they came to a point where rocks jolted out of the land ever taller, the vegetation changing again slowly with pine trees mingling with the oak and olive trees.

“This is where Acheron’s canyon starts, we should follow it from above. The fords and narrows create treacherous shallows and small waterfalls with fast running water which can be dangerous as its volume increases squeezing through them”, Felix motioned pointing at a place in the rising rocks where a path led up. “Or at least that’s according to my research.”

“Up we go”, Bellerophon followed him up the dirt path through the rock and forest to the canyon’s top a hundred meter above the river.

For the rest of the daylight they walked through the pine forest, traversing the canyon.

As the sun set over the canyon entrance to the west they made camp preparing for the night.

“it’s so serene here, and I know I’ve said it before, but it’s so beautiful”, Felix watched over the cliff’s edge at the vista before and beneath them.

“The river is thundering below, and yeah it really is beautiful”, Bellerophon agreed eating some of his dinner consisting of tomatoes, olives and local ham plus some of the other stuff they had purchased from the Gliki grocery store.

“This curse is tiring us more than we should be…”, Felix felt sluggish.

“Yeah, I feel far more exhausted than I should, even after walking for like five hours”, and so they continued to talk until under the sounds of the forest’s nocturnal denizens they fell asleep.

The morrow next the two friends continued on their way to the Oracle, even if Bellerophon did not know where the Acherontion was, if not back near the river’s estuary.

“Do you hear anything?” They had been walking for three hours when Felix stood idle, looking left and right.

“Should I?” Bellerophon stopped, glanced over at Felix.

“Where’s all the forest life? No bird noises, no small mammals, no nothing”, Felix explained.

“Now, I don’t like this…”, Bellerophon was interrupted by a constant, regular thud, thud, thud, thud sound coming closer to them from the north.

“That does not sound like thunder”, Bellerophon stepped closer to the cliff’s edge where the canopy of the trees opened up, trying to identify the source of the sound.

“Thunder without any clouds? Something…I just thought how to undo the curse! Avifors!” He transformed both of them into swallows, and back to human forms again. He had just remade Bellerophon into human when a vicious, deafening roar came from above their heads as a shadow covered the sun passing overhead them.

Bellerophon looked up to see a green bellied flying lizard circle around once before landing twenty meters away, two sets of horns extruding out the back of its head, a long snout with serrated, curved, gleaming white teeth opened sending flames up in the air as the dragon folded its black and deep blue veined wings against its scaly body, standing on all four legs with foot-long claws curving down as they disturbed the soil beneath them.

“Oh, fuck! HIDE!” Bellerophon yelled, grabbing Felix by his elbow and shoving both of them behind a two-meter-high grey granite boulder just as the dragon reared its head, taking in a breath before unleashing a torrent of fire from his mouth and nostrils.

“Any ideas on how not to end up as chicken nuggets?” Bellerophon tried to hide his panic behind humour.

Felix did not reply immediately, instead feeling the rock standing between them and the dragon’s never-ceasing breath of fire. “Wait…why isn’t the rock melting already? From what I read Hellenic mountain dragons have one of the world’s hottest fires…the rock should be melting by now…”, Felix contemplated aloud.

“The rock? I am!” Bellerophon replied, screaming.

“Are you, though? I’m not sweating, are you?” Bellerophon looked at him incredulously before wiping his forehead with his right hand.

“How? We should be melting along with th…what are you doing? ARE YOU CRAZY!!” Bellerophon tried to grab Felix’s hand, restraint him from getting out from behind the rock.

Felix stood in front of the dragon, bathed in the bright red and orange flames and just walked through the flying lizard who with a final roar dissolved into thin air.

“How? What? Why? What now?” Bellerophon was lost for words, coming out from behind the boulder.

“The rock wasn’t melting, and I can’t believe in our day and age the Professors and Archontas Atreos as well as the board of scholars would want or allow students to die by fighting a magical creature teams of adult wizards have great difficulty besting”, Felix dusted his shoulders, and walking to where his backpack lay he picked it up and shouldering it.

“There’s that…why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you have daddy issues”, Felix teased him, ducking from smack coming his way.

“You jerk!” Bellerophon laughed.

“Also…last night a chimera passed through our camp, you were snoring, and I pretended to be vast asleep. Had she wanted us for a light snack I doubt we could have fended her off, considering only one wizard is known to have defeated and killed one, and he died shortly after from exhaustion”, Felix began walking.

“Whaaaa! And I don’t snore”, Bellerophon walked besides him.

“Suuuure!”

The afternoon sun was giving way to dusk a few hours of journeying later, when Bellerophon noticed Felix checking the river below with increasing frequency.

“What are you looking for?” He asked looking down himself, trying to ascertain what Felix was looking for.

“We should be getting close now, the water’s changed colour, and nature is going to a slumber”, Bellerophon, turning his head left and right, observed for the first time how trees were sparser than before.

“It’s getting cloudier? Water reflects its environment”, Bellerophon rationalized the water’s change.

“It’s not the clouds, look inside the river, not the surface. It’s darker, it’s not the clouds. We’re getting closer to a Veilate…if my research is correct”, Felix pointed at the middle of the river’s breadth where the water was the darkest.

“A Veilwhatnow?”

“A Veil Gate, I shipped it. According to what I found in Elysion’s library literature a sect of wizards left behind physical manifestations of the veil, or Veil Gates. Our minds can only perceive them as Gates…to the underworld”, Felix tried to explain, winking and pursing his eyebrows as he brought forth the knowledge from his mind’s recesses.

“Anyone possessing such magical knowledge and ability in ancient times would have easily been considered as…”, Felix interrupted Bellerophon.

“Gods. These Veilates alter the environment around them, water becomes a murky grey-black colour and all life within its radius slowly die off, plants wither away, and nothing can drink from it without ill affect. It does take prolonged exposure though for symptoms to appear.”

“And he drunk from Kokytus and with three mouthfuls he lay dead, his soul carried across the Styx by the Ferryman in his vessel. Callirrhoe drunk next, and with Andromeda’s Protection she managed more than thrice without death overcoming her. For her hubris she became Achronia, cursed by the gods”, Bellerophon iterated in awe.

“I did not find that in the Library”, Felix raised an eyebrow.

“Did you have access to the Elders’ Dome?”

“No, too well protected, even against my trick I have up my sleeve…”

“Yeah, only Seventh-years and faculty have access to it. I remember those verses from my brother’s Path and some correspondence we had at the time”, Bellerophon explained with a nod.

“Cursed to be Achronia, I wonder what it means, I thought it was her name”, Felix said, with Bellerophon shrugging in ignorance.

Two hours later, with the sun slowly approaching its slumber Felix stopped walking. “We’re here, now we need to get down there”, he pointed at the base of the canyon, where a pebbled outcrop gave way to a cave entrance. The area around it all the way up the canyon’s top was bare of any and all plant life, and out from the cave’s dark grey granite walls a stream of grey-black water merged with Acheron.

“That cave-like orifice in the rocks? How do we even get down there? I don’t like the look of that ford with the pebbles”, Bellerophon leaned in taking a look over the cliff’s edge. “Are you sure? There’s Mundanes down there.”

“I am, and if Muggles are down there they must have either swam there or climbed down somehow…”, Felix tried searching for a way down.

“See those canoe-like boats? That’s what they used”, Bellerophon pointed at ten such orange and green vessels with his right index finger.

Ten minutes later neither of them could find any path to the base of the canyon. “How deep would you say the water is down there?” Felix asked Bellerophon.

“I don’t know, three to five meters deep? Maybe?” Bellerophon shrugged.

“Good enough”, Felix took two steps back before running over the cliff and jumping feet first. Yelling his excitement himself he heard some of the Muggles below and Bellerophon above scream.

With a splash he plunged into Acheron’s icy waters. With two upstrokes of his arms and feet his head broke the surface, cleaning his face from his shoulder-length black locks he swam to the pebbled outcrop. “Are you crazy kid? You’ll catch pneumonia!” A Muggle woman told him, wearing a red life vest over her sport clothes, her black hair caught in a ponytail. Felix guessed she must be around forty years old.

“Ha! Been there, done that. Now, if you’ll excuse me”, Felix walked out of the water and around her, looking around for the cave entrance.

A second loud splash distracted the Muggles, Bellerophon had jumped in. Felix dried himself with a quick flick of his wrist behind his back, under normal circumstances committing magic in the presence of Muggles would have resulted into expulsion from Hogwarts, but the Ministries were still being rebuilt, and this was not normal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination.

“The river is not safe this time of the year!” A Muggle man with a bald head and frustrated hazel eyes also wearing a blue life vest yelled to Bellerophon, as he swam out of the river.

“Fucking freezing!” Bellerophon exclaimed climbing out of the water.

“You’re not even wet!” Another Muggle man exclaimed surprised.

“Hydrophobic second-skin clothing tech”, Bellerophon shrugged, trying to keep a truthful façade as he joined Felix who was doing his best not to laugh.

“You cast a spell before jumping, didn’t ya?” Felix whispered once they were some distance away from the company of Muggles.

“You betcha. What now?” Bellerophon whispered back with a smirk.

“Now, we wait for them to depart. I’ve spotted where we must go, but I don’t think it wise we just disappear, so we wait. Pretend we are exploring about”, Felix pretended to scour the pebbles for hidden treasures only a teen would consider treasures.

An hour later four of the seventh-years appeared, in a canoe made from a tree trunk, going upriver without oars. Two hours later the Muggles left and some more Elysion students had arrived.

Twilight had fallen over the canyon casting a peculiar colour of shade over the rocks.

Felix stood up and with Bellerophon following behind him, they left their backpacks behind, and entered the cave, the light dimming once inside, they blinked rapidly for their eyes to get accustomed to the decreased luminosity. The cave itself was of a barren brown colour with some stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Felix followed the stream of grey-black water to the cave’s far rear side.

“Wall? Water doesn’t flow like that from solid granite wall…Revelio!” Felix said getting his wand out.

The seemingly solid granite rock flickered before vanishing.

“I guess some illusions can feel solid as well as look it”, Bellerophon said, Felix nodded stepping inside the second cave.

This second cave was almost fully circular, Felix doubted was a natural formation. There at the center of it stood the rectagonal gate made of black stone with a water-like substance pulsating inside it, there was an earie silence in the chamber and torches glowing with ethereal blue light provided what little light there was. “Whatever you do, don’t let the whispers make you touch the thing inside the Veilate, it’ll kill you instantly”, Felix told Bellerophon stepping closer to the Veil Gate.

“I had no intention of going anywhere near that thing.”

Under the Veil Gate there was an altar made of white marble with a small bowl carved in its middle. Four river streams joined underneath it.

“Four, not five? And what’s with the empty altar below?” A Seventh-year girl wondered aloud, having entered the second cave after them.

“Did we come to the wrong place?” Bellerophon worried.

“No, this is the place. Nature’s dead all around the cave and inside it, plus the Veilate…”, Felix replied looking around.

“Where’s the fifth river, then?” Another seventh-year, a boy, asked.

They searched around, with Felix and the other students casting and trying spells to reveal what might be hidden, to no avail. Finally hunger and tiredness winning them over they exited the caves, lighting a fire outside the entrance.

Hunger satisfied Bellerophon was chatting with some of the others, the fire casting orange hue shadows on them and Felix was lost in deep thought.

“The springs, not any building…four Professors, not three, but everything else is three of anything, or everything…three Trials, why potions? We’ve not had to deal with any situation demanding the use of a potion? Oracle of the dead, Necromancer Oracle, Pluto’s Oracle, Lethargos…realm of the dead? Perpetual night or Hypnos? Sleep? Night…”, he jumped up.

“Not the wrong place! Wrong time of the day!” He run inside, and to the second cave. “We are in the Oracle of the dead, we are in her cave, but we did not pay the Ferryman, ain’t no going to the realm of the dead if you don’t pay Charon his due to transferring your soul to Hades…”, Felix said to anyone behind him and to no one in particular, retrieving the two previously-portkeys-ancient coins from one of his robes’ pockets he placed them on the altar. Next he placed the tip of his wand on his other hand’s fingertips creating a small incision with the use of a spell and squeezed a few blood drops in the altar’s carved bowl.

Not a second later the Veil Gate came alive, with the substance inside it dripping a black liquid onto the altar, mixing with Felix’s blood and then overflowing over to join with the four rivers beneath. Whispers filled the cave.

“Unbelievable, the fifth river, Styx…I thought it a legend…”, Bellerophon whispered in awe.

A sound came from behind the Veil Gate and the altar, a sound of stone grinding on stone. Walking around the Veilate and the altar, Felix and Bellerophon saw a new entrance appear. Out of the shadows three sphinxes walked out sitting in front of the new entrance. Each had the body of a lion from the waist down, the torso and head of a woman with extra-long and sharp teeth and long brown hair ending in a lion’s mane, with cat -like yellow eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the cave. Wings folded on their backs.

“Three Riddlers guard the entrance to the Oracle…”, Felix whispered.


	15. Chapter 15: Achronia’s Final Prophesy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 15: Achronia’s Final Prophesy

“Three riddles we have, one each. Answer them correctly and you may pass. Answer them erroneously and we attack”, the three Sphinxes said in unison.

“We are fishermen, what we caught, we threw away; what we didn’t catch, we kept. What did we keep?” The Sphinx to the left, the oldest looking of the three with her hair turning white and her face wrinkled, asked sitting perfectly still, with her tail wrapped around her legs, wagging lightly.

“This was asked from Homer, I just hope my research has the correct answer”, Felix said with a low voice to Bellerophon before turning his head to the Sphinx. “Lice.”

“Correct”, The Sphinx said, standing up and walking out of the entrance.

“What? How?” Bellerophon exclaimed, his eyes focused on the Sphinxes worryingly.

“Fishermen, all sea-fearing men really, have sex with…well, whores…they contract or “get” lice from them, but they didn’t catch it like they do fish, in ancient Hellenic and even contemporary Hellenic the word is the same, the meaning is different”, Felix explained making Bellerophon facepalm with a groan.

“What goes through cities, fields, never moves but all meets in the same place?” The second sphinx asked, she looked to be around the middle of her age.

“Goes through cities and fields but never moves? Paths?” Felix mumbled to himself, thinking the question over.

“Is that your answer?” Asked the second Sphinx in the middle.

“No…roads maybe? If history is involved in this…? Roads! All roads lead to Rome!”

“Correct”, the second Sphinx said, standing up and walking out of the entrance.

“Two fathers and their sons go hunting in the woods. They each kill a rabbit and bring it home. They don’t lose any rabbits but only have three when they arrive home. How is that possible?” Asked the third and youngest Sphinx to the right, her face and body brimming with vitality and energy.

“Sneaky grandfather!” Bellerophon exclaimed aloud. “I know this one, my papoús kept asking me this question when I was a little kid. It’s Grandfather, father and son, that’s the answer!”

“Correct”, the three sphinxes disappeared in black ash.

Felix looked at Bellerophon who nodded. They walked in the third cave.

“Achronia…”, Felix whispered once inside. This was the cave of the dreams that were not dreams, with the marble stage on the far side with the woman dressed in her silver-threaded tunic, dancing to a tune only she could hear, her hands inviting him closer.

“Thrice you must drink from Styx, only then will you receive my final Prophesy, White Raven’s half-brother”, she said in a husky voice.

“Do I not need the Shadeglass?” Felix stood under the stage, looking up.

“You have on you all that you need. Drink”, she replied falling to her knees.

In front of him, there was a wooden bench with three potions on it. “Potions Professor….I knew we’d need this…”, he whispered kneeling down in front of the bench, where he noticed a rolled-up piece of parchment between the three vials.

If you paid attention in the years past, you know the colours of Styx and Wolfsbane, of cure and death. Two will kill you, one is always innocent. Why would you look for innocence in Charon’s Path?

Felix read the message in the parchment out loud.

“Well, ain’t this a pickle”, Bellerophon proclaimed.

“No, it’s logic…I think? It’s for seventh years remember? So, they just need to have paid attention and learned the colours of the Styx and wolfsbane potions, which thankfully we covered earlier this year and in third year in Hogwarts. Styx is pitch-black and Wolfsbane potion is a faint blue…”

“How does that help us? Other than not drink the wrong potion and die?”

“We don’t die horrible deaths? But why would us drinking the antidote, which I’m guessing is “innocent” or something that doesn’t kill us, help us with getting a Prophesy from the Oracle?”

“Especially when she said told you to drink from Styx…three times and only one would kill you!”

Felix picked up the vial with the orange liquid. “Orange juice, not even the antidote the Professor taught us earlier this year…”

“Okay, now what? We’re missing something, got any clue what?” Bellerophon scratched his head.

“Dock your ship at Acheron’s edge…”, Felix reiterated the verses they had found in the Library book. “Drink Styx…follow me!” He stood up, pivoted around and run out of the Oracle’s cave.

Going back to the Veilate he took out his wooden cup from inside his school robe. Dipping the cup in the bowl in the altar he took a cupful of the black liquid.

“I’m not sure about this..”, Bellerophon said feeling very apprehensive.

“If I die, it was an honour getting to know you”, Felix replied drinking the contents of the cup in one swift motion. Feeling his knees weaken he kneeled on the floor, “such euphori….”, he mumbled, his eyes turning white.

“Felix! Are you okay!? Felix!” Bellerophon’s voice slowly faded out.

When he opened his eyes, he was in a crossroads, covered by dense mist, four cobblestone roads met with withering grass on either side. There were no signposts or anything he could use to learn where he was, everything looked faded, as if someone had bleached out the colour of things.

“Where am I? Is anyone here?” He called out loud, receiving no response.

“Is there anyone here!” Felix felt alone and cold. “Where is…”here”? Where am I?”

The more Felix tried to walk away from the crossroads, follow any of the four directions, the more he felt his will to live drain away.

“This is pointless…what am I supposed to do here? Achronia drunk this to foresee the future from the dead? Am I in…the underworld? Beyond the Veil? Did I die? Is this being dead? Am I dead?” Questions flooded in his mind quicker that he could voice them.

“No, I can’t be dead…I drunk from the Styx, and the Charon’s Path isn’t going to have anything that can actually kill me…we’re not in the bronze age anymore…twentieth-second century parents would sue the school, and everyone involved if a single child was killed during this…so, what’s going on?”

He heard it, the whispers, and the mist dispersing. Felix gasped, with the mist cleared he saw an endless desolate plain with withering plants and trees blowing out black ash in the wind and dotted with glowing silver and black orbs.

“What in the…”, Felix walked to the closest silver orb to him. “What…are you?” With a hesitant hand Felix touched it, it felt cold and remote to the touch. “How can a ball of light feel…remote?”

The orb fluxuated before expanding to a figure of light. “You are no orb! You are a soul!...are you? What’s going on…”

The figure of light touched his forehead and his mind flooded with images and visions, that person’s whole life burning in his brain. “Aaggh!” Felix screamed feeling his essence flair in pain.

“My wife killed me…how can I ever move on if I am not avenged?” Felix took a step back as the figure of light turned back to a silver orb.

The whispers increased in volume and loudness.

“That was…an interesting experience, is this how Achronia made her predictions of the past? Kept drinking from Styx and touching the orbs…the souls of the lost? I’m guessing “here” is limbo? Where the souls of those who have not moved on linger?” Felix thought aloud. “I need to clear my mind; these whispers are almost making my ears hurt.

Taking a deep breath Felix emptied his mind of all thoughts, lowering his defenses.

At first the whispers of the lost souls sounded even louder, but then they went away, replaced by one singular voice. A very familiar voice.

““I…I’m walking through a murky black, watery veil…I can’t go through it ever...I don’t know for how long…I’m scared…how does this stop?”

Felix’s eyes shot wide open, looking left and right, turning and pivoting around trying to find the source of the voice amidst all the lost souls.

“I’m scared…how does this stop?” Charles kept repeating, as the crossroads begun to fade out more, scorched by an ever-increasing bright light. He was waking up.

“Charles? Where are you!” Felix yelled, the crossroads disintegrating rapidly.

Felix came to from his Styx-induced trance, and before Bellerophon could do or say anything he grabbed his cup and swallowed a second fill from the altar’s bowl.

“Felix! What are y…”, Bellerophon’s voice trailed as the liquid took effect.

Once in Limbo Felix lost no time, “Charles! Where are you!” Receiving no reply, he emptied his mind again.

““I…I’m walking through a murky black, watery veil…I can’t go through it ever...I don’t know for how long…I’m scared…how does this stop?” He heard Charles’ voice, distant and desperate.

“Charles!” Felix shouted with his mind. Some of the orbs dissipated creating an effect of dust blowing in the wind, exposing their inner core to the elements with the light burning out.

“What is it that that my mind can’t comprehend and is creating this elaborate visual for me?” Felix thought to himself. “Charles!” He mind-shouted again. More of the orbs in the immediate vicinity dissipated away.

After the third shout only one orb remained, glowing bright silver, near him. Felix extended his hand, touching it with trembling hands.

The orb expanded into Charles glowing figure, faded yet bright.

“Felix…is that you? Wh-where am I? What is this place? I can’t move on. How do I move on?” Felix felt his heart melt and his consciousness wail as his mouth failed to produce any audible sounds. “Ch-Charles…I’ve missed you so much it just hurts. What do you remember last?” He asked Charles’ glowing figure, his eyes watering up, his voice coming out strained.

“I…I remember us in Azrail’s lair, then him casting a spell and me somehow…when I next opened my eyes I was here, what is here? What is going on?”

“I…you…this place is…”, Felix could not find the words or the way to tell Charles the truth.

“I am dead, aren’t I? Azrail’s spell killed me, didn’t it?” Felix nodded, lowering his chin, every fiber of his being wanting to explode in rage, in sorrow, in despair.

“I would give anything to have you alive, anything…it’s all my f…” Charles interrupted him.

“No, it’s Azrail’s and Ernaline’s fault. It didn’t hurt, okay? I didn’t suffer, it was instantaneous, I felt nothing when it happened. Please, tell me my parents and my brothers are okay?”

“They are”, Felix nodded, his chest heaving irregularly. “Professor Horsewood placed them all under the Fidelius charm, they are okay…I’m sorry cuz…I’m so sorry…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Felix. Do me a favour, please?”

“Yes, anything”, Felix nodded, raising his chin to look at Charles’ face, glowing in silver light.

“Please, tell them how much I love them, I never got to do so. And please, don’t blame yourself. You did the best you could in an impossible situation, okay?”

Tears streaked down Felix’s face, black tears which evaporated when they touched the soil.

Felix closed his eyes, when he opened them again he was in the cave, kneeling and safely in Bellerophon’s arms keeping him steady.

“What is it like? Are you okay?” Bellerophon asked him, Felix saw other students behind him.

“I need to rest before the third time, you can try it if you want”, Felix replied, giving him his cup. “It won’t hurt or kill you, obviously.”

Felix lay with his back on the altar while Bellerophon rose to his feet, filling the cup with the black liquid and giving it a whiff before swallowing it.

For Felix each of the two times in Limbo had seemed like an eternity, as if hours had passed each time, but he was surprised to see Bellerophon come to only five minutes later. Raising to his feet again he drunk from Styx again for a second time.

“I…I saw my brother…as an orb of black light, why are there some silver and some black?” Bellerophon asked half an hour later.

“So, each time takes longer I guess”, Felix thought to himself. “I have no idea”, Felix replied extending his arm for the cup.

Bellerophon handed him the cup back. “I’ll have to wait for my turn to pass the Path next year for the third time, I think.”

Felix drunk his third time, each time he noted tasted more bitter than the previous one. The first one had been euphoric, the third one tasted like bitter rotten eggs.

Charles was there, one lone illuminated in silver light figure in the vast desolate that was Limbo.

“Will you do it?” Charles asked him.

“I will, I will tell your parents.

“How are the others? Claudia and Emerick? Ethel?”

“They are okay, I think. I left Hogwarts for a year, student exchange program, I’m in Elysion in Hellada”, Felix proceeded to tell Felix all of what had transpired in the year after last summer.

“Elysion does sound amazing”, Charles said bitterly.

“How long have you been in here?” Felix asked, seeing Charles’ glow ebb slowly.

“Since it happened, I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, although I did not know how or when I’d see you again”, Charles replied.

“Professor Ixion was right, accept what is and move on…I’ll be alright Charles, I’ll be okay”, Felix said, committing all of his energy to sound calm.

“I will, let’s just spend some more time together, I don’t think we’ll get a chance again any time soon”, Charles hugged him tight.

“It is time”, Charles said sometime later, Felix had no idea how much time had passed, “I have something to give you, my happiest memory, I treasured it in life and in death, let it guide you past your sorrow”, Charles extended his right-hand touching Felix’s forehead.

“That…I didn’t know it meant so much to you, that moment did…I’ll never forget you, Charles. Never.”

“I’ll see you again, where no shadows lie. I read that somewhere, I like it for the occasion”, Charles smiled the smile Felix had come to know as his signature, full of mirth.

“Goodbye, Charles. Goodbye, I can’t explain in words just how much I miss you”, Charles closed his eyelids forming an orb again as Felix’s brain refused to interpret what it was witnessing as Charles’ silver orb moved on beyond the veil.

Felix came to. “What time is it?” He asked, his voice coarse.

“Break of dawn, that third time span hours”, Bellerophon replied, standing up.

“Let’s end this, I’m tired”, Felix stood up pocketing his cup and walked to Achronia’s third cave.

“Thrice you have drunk from Styx’s waters, come closer, child. Come closer for your Prophesy, my final one.

“A seed must wonder far from the tree, along the river it must travel, until it is ready to receive soil, water and understanding and spring forth roots, branch and knowledge eternal, in faraway lands, far from the tree, a tree has become”, she said looking at him.

“I don’t understand…”

“Understanding takes time and effort, and you are yet very young”, she told him with a gentle smile.

“You, Odysseus and Andromeda, you were more than Elysion’s founders, you are…were the Old Gods, weren’t you?” Felix asked without it being a question.

“In a previous lifetime I was…arrogant, we all were. In our pride we thought ourselves greater than we were”, she replied.

“What were your names? Your true names. How old are you? Where are you from?” Felix fired question after question.

“So many questions. I don’t remember our names, we’ve had so many over the eons…Zeus, Hera, Gaia, Nyx, Erebos, Amun, Osiris, Isis, Belenos, Tutatis, Yànwàng, Amaterasu, Guanyin, Tiamat, Anubis, Zarathustra, Ahura, Mazda, Marduk, Ishtar…such was our arrogance…After the first few millennia I lost track of all our names and wars, they were so many”, Achronia said, her voice lowering.

“But how? I mean…that’s immortality…”, Bellerophon voiced both confused and in awe.

“There is no immortality, we are eternal, and the difference is significant. We drunk from the River and read the leaves of the tree of life in the Garden, back when the Great desert to the south was a fertile valley of plenty, a cornucopia of existence. Our first war dried it out, ruined it forever, and the garden was no more. Algeine sought to understand how to inflict and cause pain, how to heal it…best healer there has ever been, the most achieved torturer. She created the Protection; this room is shrouded with it.

“Lethargos, he loved us calling him that and the Mundanes called him Pluto, he sought to understand Death, the removal of life and how to predict the future from visions of lethe, his experimentation with the fabric of reality gave us the Shadeglass. And I…loved being called after my life’s ambition. Learning, knowledge, understanding. I was obsessed with it, and so I created the Book of Leaves. So much understanding was never meant for any one Human to possess, and in my arrogance, I betrayed my brother and sister and desired their creations, hoping to bypass my invention’s flaw with them, for to read the Book of Leaves is to forfeit one’s self. Call me by my name, the one I desired above all else, I have been punished for long enough”, Achronia replied to both of them.

“Your name? I don’t know it, is it not Achronia?” Felix looked at Bellerophon who shrugged, then back at her.

“Do you know the Hellenic word for time, child?”

“Chrónos?” Felix replied, unsure of where this was going.

“Indeed, and “a” in front is like “un” in your language. My name’s not Achronia, I am Achronia, out of time. Lethargos attains his eternality by moving from one dead body to another, like the Necromancer he was…” Felix cut her off.

“He used the Shadeglass to do so, didn’t he? The staff from Elysion’s Great Hall visual enchantments…the Ferryman and his vessel…”

“He used the Catalyst for a lot of uses, but not for this. Algeine used items to transfer her consciousness across generations.”

“Horcruxes? She invented them?” Felix asked, astonished.

“Horcruxes? Crude imitation of Algeine’s inventive genius. No, she used her inventions of mind-controlling and mind-destroying spells like an artform, and through the destruction of one mind, hers would extend past its natural point, through the use of an item she’d forever remain young, while destroying the bodies of others, Mundanes and wizard-folk alike.

“As for me…I tried to extend my life by excluding me from time itself. Be everywhen and nowhen, instead I am cursed in this non-existence and my only release is for someone to call me by my name”, She fell to her knees, the marble stage turning to molten rock and vanishing beneath the soil.

“If Achronia is not your name…Callirrhoe? Tiamat? Amaterasu? Hera? Minerva? Athena? Isis?” Felix asked her.

“No, child. You are far more perceptive than this, I created the Book of Leaves”, she shook her head, her tunic turning dark blue and white.

“Gnósi? Katanóese? Noése?” Felix said next, trying to remember the words for knowledge and understanding in Hellenic.

Achronia closed her eyes expecting to finally be allowed to pass away, “It has been so long…I am released from my burden, but why am I not dying? I should be, why am I not?” Her mood turning to panic and despair.

“I guess the other two deceived you more than you thought”, Felix felt sorry for her and her inability to die.

“Felix! The substantive spell!” Bellerophon exclaimed, shaking Felix’s left shoulder.

“Sub…oh right! If this works, you’ll die, are you sure?” Felix asked her, even though he knew her answer before she gave it.

“I have been neither alive nor dead for far too long. It will work because it has worked, child of wonder. So, I will tell you this final bit of prophetic advice. The White Raven, omen of Thánatos, self-proclaimed incarnation of things he understands not, approaches. You fear him not, face what you fear. And in the end lay down your burden and take roots as our equal. Remember always child, prophesies are a multi-faceted prism of perspective, and in the end all human perspective is flawed.”

“Azrail? He’s here?” Bellerophon looked worried, Felix’s face was ashen and emotionless.

“He will be soon, and if he understands what he knows about the Shadeglass you will die”, she told Felix, looking into his eyes.

“How can you not understand something you know? Oh, my head hurts now…”, Bellerophon rubbed the ridges of his nose.

“Knowing something, understanding you know it and knowing you understand it are different levels of nóese, young one.”

“I can see his brain cells exploding now”, Felix tried to joke, yet his voice was bereft of joy.

“Farewell Achronia, I hope you find some peace in death”, Felix pointed his wand at her. “Tempusessere!” An orange-cyan jet of light expelled from his wand hitting her right in the middle of her chest.

Achronia smiled, tears running down her cheeks, her hair withering away. “Thank you, child of wonder”, the environment around her shattered like liquid glass, tearing the fabric of reality and she, Pluto’s Oracle, Achronia of the ages aged her years before their very eyes, her skin and flesh wrinkling and rotting away in less than the span of the blink of an eye.


	16. Chapter 16: Unleashed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 16: Unleashed

A loud explosion tore their eyes from the spot the Oracle had existed a moment past, rocking the cave from the outside.

“He’s here…Azrail is here, where are you going!” Bellerophon had turned to leave the Oracle’s cave.

“What do you mean where I’m going? Out there”, Bellerophon turned his head but not his body.

“We should leave this place, Azrail can’t be defeated”, Felix tried to reason with his friend. Screams echoed in the cave system from outside, screams and loud sounds.

“I’m not going to run away like some coward! And like hell he can’t be defeated, everyone can be! He’s only human, despite what he may delude himself about”, Bellerophon replied, his anger rising.

“You don’t understand, he’s wearing the Armour of the Old Gods, he can’t be harmed, physically or magically. He can’t be defeated!” Felix insisted, as a second explosion rattled the cave ceiling.

“Didn’t you hear Achronia? If all human perspective is flawed, then all Armour made by humans is as well. No human is invisible, why has he not conquered the world, then? He has not done anything after destroying the Ministries. Could it be he’s afraid of a weakness he knows he has? Either way I’m going out there”, Bellerophon took a few steps closer to the entrance of the second cave.

“If you go out there, you will die”, Felix tried to scare him into staying inside or finding a way to escape without fighting Azrail.

“THEN I’LL DIE FIGHTING!” Bellerophon bellowed pivoting around fast. “I’ll die with my honour intact, but I am NOT going to abandon the students out there to their fate. All we can do is fight, Felix. Against evil, against fear, against hatred. Never surrender, never relent! I’m going out there, and maybe I’ll live and maybe I’ll die. You can come out of this cave and fight your fears, or you can forever remain a frightened, little child. Choose”, Bellerophon left with quick strides and his wand out.

“No, wait…!” Felix paced to the second cave’s entrance, froze, stepped back and forth again, froze. Another explosion rocked the cave’s walls.

“Avada Kedavra!” Azrail’s voice came through the rock walls, faded.

He felt bile rising in his throat, and an almond-sulfuric bitterness fill his mouth, his stomach poked by burning hot rods. His face turning a white ashen mask, his lips curved in disgust, his fists clenched so tight blood was restricted from reaching the tips of his fingers, turning them white. Numbness spread over his head and down his spine. “I…I feel…angry, so unbelievably infuriated, it hurts!” He pointed his wand at himself, letting out a rugged breath.

Bellerophon exited the cave wand first. He blinked for his eyes to get used to the sunlight, blinded by the sudden increase of luminosity. His eyes adjusting, he saw everyone, every student present firing spells and curses at Azrail, who alone stood his ground, laughing at them, cloaked in his Dementor’s cape.

“Exaérosis!” Bellerophon fired a red-orange jet from his wand, creating sub-explosions mid-air right at Azrail who with a flick of his wrist in a “P” motion deflected it back at him. Bellerophon ducked at the last moment, the spell impacting the rocks behind him releasing a bright white-orange light that evaporated them upon contact, sending a shockwave which leveled those trees nearest.

“Confugo!” Bellerophon cast at Azrail, while another seventh year used Diffindo at him. Azrail seemed to ignore both spells.

“Avada Kedavra!” A seventh-year boy next to Bellerophon dropped dead, hit by the killing curse.

Azrail pointed his wand at Bellerophon, creating an “S” pattern in the air. “Av…”, a loud, guttural roar emanated from within the cave’s depths, interrupting them, making their skins vibrate from the loud bass. Not two seconds later a snow leopard with white fur and large cyan eyes came out running in a blur. Gathering its four legs together the big cat jumped at Azrail attacking him with claws and teeth, growling as if the dark wizard had killed its litter. Dropping them on the ground the leopard’s hind legs moved to slash and tear at Azrail’s stomach and belly, while it sunk its teeth right at his jugular, moving its head left and right with vicious intent.

Azrail tried to fight it off, in vain, yet all his wounds were constantly being healed. Casting a non-verbal spell, he caught the leopard all along his left foreleg from the ankle to its shoulder, tearing through skin, muscle, sinews and bones.

Enraged and in pain the animal recoiled jumping off him with a roar. Blood falling on the soil below in copious amounts.

Azrail jumped up to his feet, readying to cast another spell at the wounded creature. Bearing its fangs at him, with eyes full of bloodlust the leopard jumped around, rolling and recoiling as Azrail sent spell after spell at it, with crazed, wild eyes full of terror and fury.

With a jump more the leopard reached Azrail, slashing at his heels and thighs, and a dance of death begun between them, where it would dodge and avoid his spells, slash at him, jump around, avoid his next curse, slash at him, repeat.

“Who is that person? I’ve never seen anyone fight like this before…”, Bellerophon looked around, taking in his surroundings and who was where. “Everyone! Either attack Azrail when he tries to cast a spell at whoever has animagused or try healing that leopard!” People nodded and wave after wave of bright coloured jets started flying from all directions.

A sixth year cast a non-verbal spell, trying to heal the leopard’s foreleg, mending it some, so the animal could at least step on it.

Azrail was hit by seventh-year’s curse. Stumbling back, he transformed into his White Raven form, trying to fly away.

Felix transformed to his human form, sweating, clothes torn and bloodied, his left arm severely injured and hanging limp. “No, you don’t! Come here!” He spat saliva mixed with blood at the pebbled soil before turning his wand at himself and transforming himself into his white-bellied eagle form, with reversing his extremities so that his injured arm transformed into one of the talons rather than one of his wings.

“Aethon? Felix? Where’s my father and the Professors?” Bellerophon wondered to himself, lost for words and panting himself.

The White Raven was larger than what a normal one would be, but it was by far smaller than the white and black eagle. Felix flew under his brother’s path, approaching him and at the last moment he turned upside down, digging his talons in the Raven’s underside. Azrail let out a shriek trying to break free and bite his way out of it. Using his own curved beak, the eagle tore at the Raven’s neck, twisting and turning together in mid-air acrobatics as Azrail tried to release himself from the larger bird’s grasp and Felix tried to inflict as much injury at him as he could.

Azrail brought his head forward, pecking at Felix’s wing, feathers flying off loose. The Eagle let out a cry of pain, releasing the Raven who made a loop, turning around and diving at the Eagle.

No one on the ground dared fire a spell at the Raven, in fear of hitting Felix instead. “Clear away Felix, we can get him from down here”, Bellerophon mumbled under his breath.

Azrail tried to dig his talons into Felix’s exposed underside but the eagle turned at the last moment, digging its talons on the Raven’s neck and tearing outwards.

“Fucking hell!” A seventh-year girl shouted. “That should have killed him!” And it should have, but no matter what Felix did, Azrail’s wounds healed almost instantaneously.

Grasping Azrail by his head he tossed him on the ground, both transforming back to their human forms.

“Brother…what are you doing here!” Azrail demanded, in a manic state. “And since when can you transform not into one, but two animals!” Saliva fell from the corners of his mouth.

Felix did not reply, instead he pointed his wand at Azrail, making eye contact with his half-brother, eyes crazed with cold fury. “Avada Kedavra!” He tried to cast at Azrail, but his wand refused to obey, sending forth blast waves of white colour instead.

“You would dare! As if even that could penetrate the Armour!” Azrail dismissed him, as everyone else begun dueling him at the same time. Bellerophon hit him with a spell at his groin.

“You can’t ha…”, Azrail staggered back, looking both surprised and enraged beyond reason.

“Hide behind solid objects!” Felix yelled at Bellerophon and whoever else could hear him, seeing Azrail stretch his hand above his head, just as he had done not a year before. “Bellerophon! Levitate what large rocks you can! Wingardium Leviosa!” He yelled aiming at as many boulders as he could, levitating them.

“Right! Ánoses!” Bellerophon yelled with others imitating their example, as Azrail yelled “Angelsword!”

A sixth-year girl dropped dead a few meters to Felix’s right, her blue eyes turning vacant of life, with the other killing curses smashing against objects and levitated boulders.

Felix sent red sparks up in the air. “Attack him without mercy and keep attacking him!” Felix transformed back into a leopard leaping at Azrail with fangs and claws bare.

A few spells later Azrail readied to fire another Angelsword at them, when a seventh-year boy’s spell hit him in his groin.

“Bloodfang! To me!” Azrail staggered back in shock.

A second later Bloodfang apparated next to his Master.

“Go feral, kill them all”, Azrail ordered him and dissaparated in a torrent of black smoke.

With a wide grin Bloodfang pointed his wand at him, transforming to his feral form. “Here kitty” he laughed attacking Felix.

A sixth-year boy transformed into a wild brown dog, joining forces with Felix against Bloodfang,

Leopard and dog launched at the bat-like creature coordinating their attacks on Bloodfang’s legs and ribs.

Bloodfang battled both, with seeming ease. “He’s playing with them”, Bellerophon wanted to fire spells at Bloodfang but dared not with the three of them moving as fast and erratically as they did.

Bloodfang slapped the leopard back, grabbing hold of the dog’s head, tilting around and sinking its teeth into the struggling animal’s neck, sucking its blood before tearing his teeth out and throwing him up against a rock, rendering it unconscious.

Felix bounced off from Bloodfang’s slap, growling at the pain in his left foreleg and started circling Bloodfang, with locked eye contact, his fangs bare and dripping blood, Azrail’s blood, Bloodfang’s blood. Bloodfang hissed circling himself around, his eyes and pivot following Felix, his back hunched, ready to defend or attack. His hands bent and open by his sides, engorged, black, sharp nails ready to lacerate flesh.

Bloodfang’s human face with bat characteristics skewed with anger as he watched the big cat circle him, his tail wagging left and right. Felix changed his pose, crouching on all his legs, leveling himself to the ground, eyes, mouth and face tilted up on an eye lock with its foe.

Felix edged closer, circling, snarling. Everything, everyone was at a standstill. The other students, Bellerophon included, dared not cast a spell, any spell, lest they unbalance the two opponents or cause disadvantage to Felix.

Bloodfang jumped at the leopard, aiming all ten of his nails at the animal’s neck. With feline speed and reflexes Felix jumped to the left, and using torque, muscle and claws he returned the slap to Bloodfang, catching the feral animagus right across his left cheek. Bloodfang howled in pain trying to backslap Felix, who jumped back slapping Bloodfang again, this time on his right cheek.

“Turn the other cheek, Bloodfang!” A seventh-year boy taunted the man, who ignored him focusing solely on Felix.

Bloodfang feigned an attack to the left, attacking from the right. Felix crouched under the assaulting hand, before jumping to the right and rolling on the floor he used both hind legs to slash and tear at Bloodfang’s abdomen.

Had Felix’s hind legs found their target true they’d have gutted Bloodfang wide open from groin to stomach, but Bloodfang stepped back, his face dripping blood, his left eye gauged out of its socket.

Felix tried to sidestep and attack Bloodfang from his left flank, and now blind spot, but Bloodfang saw it coming and taking a step back with his left foot when Felix launched at him grabbed hold of his neck and head with both hands, tightening his grip, digging his nails in his flesh. Felix roared in pain as Bloodfang lifted him off the ground before slamming him down with a foot over his sternum a hand rising above Bloodfang’s head, ready to strike at Felix’s face.


	17. Chapter 17: Wareater’s Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 17: Wareater’s Redemption

A pilon of blue light appeared to Bloodfang’s left distracting both Bloodfang and Bellerophon, as a wizard apparated in and immediately transformed into a towering brown bear.

With a bear-growl he slammed into Bloodfang grabbing hold of him with both forelegs and mouth before throwing him up against the cave’s walls some twenty meters away, standing on its two hind legs between Bloodfang and the semi-unconscious leopard.

Bellerophon lost no time pointing his wand at the feral animagus. “Exaérosis!” The spell impacted the cave wall evaporating it in the orange-white light, the explosion’s shrapnel shredding Bloodfang’s right arm from the shoulder down.

Bloodfang wailed a blood-curling sound and seeing the bear charge at him looking menacing he dissaparated away.

Quietness spread over the pebbled battlefield, a peculiar stillness after all the chaos, coloured jets of light and barrage of sounds.

“Elysion was under attack, what happened here!” Aristides asked, transforming back to human, from his bear form.

“Father! Azrail was here…yet we are still alive? We…we pushed him back? And Felix…I have never seen anyone fight as ferociously as he just…oh my god! Felix!” Bellerophon run at his friend, hemorrhaging on the pebbles, transformed back to his human form. Neck and left arm gashing out deep red blood.

Professors apparated in. “Treat the students!” Aristides ordered them, pointing at those injured or dead.

“Archon, Elysion is safe and sound”, Elysion’s Deputy Archon told Aristides, appearing in and going to the student nearest to him.

With a nod to his Deputy, Aristides kneeled down and begun trying to stop Felix from hemorrhaging. Taking Felix on his arms he rose to his feet. “We have injured and dead, treat the injured as best you can, apparate them in the infirmary first then come back for the dead. You see any of Azrail’s cronies, kill on sight. Bellerophon take hold of my arm”, Aristides dissaparated, apparating in the infirmary.

“Nurse!” He yelled, placing Felix on one of the beds. “Bellerophon, help as best you can, here”, he told his son before dissaparating away.

Bellerophon felt lost, adrenaline still coursing through his veins, wanting to scream, to lash out, to cry, to act, his breathing coming short and fast.

The Nurse came running, and after a quick examination of Felix he grabbed hold of three vials. “Mr. Atreos, hold your friend’s mouth open, and tilt his head back, quick or we’ll lose him!” The man gave Bellerophon quick orders who like an arrow finding purpose did as instructed. “What happened? Did he fight a lion or something? He wasn’t here at school when we were attacked, earlier.”

“No, we fought Azrail, and he was the leopard, and the eagle and…and…is he…?” Felix convulsed and shivered as the Nurse forced fed him the contents of the vials down his throat. He then begun casting healing spells around and in his torn and injured arm. “Hold it straight and hold it still for ten minutes, he’ll live, maybe”, the Nurse replied, before turning his attention to the other students apparating in by the Professors.

“Hold on, Felix. Hold on. You fought well, you are worthy of the Charon’s Path…hold on”, Bellerophon tried talking to his friend, trying to distract himself, trying to process the events of the day.

“Mr. Atreos fetch me clean towels and bowls of hot water, Episkey anyone with light or flesh wounds so I don’t have to spend time on that as well”, The Nurse instructed them twenty minutes later.

Elysion’s Nurse concentrated on Felix’s hand again, using his wand and enchanted silver-blue silk bandages around his arm, from palm to shoulder and around his torso and neck to tie it in place.

“N-nurse…w-will this leave a scar?” Felix came in and out of consciousness.

“It will, and you’re not out of the woods yet, Mr. Burton”, the Nurse replied, casting non-verbal healing spells on his arm and other injuries.

“Lea…ve it, I-I don’t need the others…”, Felix lost consciousness again just as Bellerophon returned with the stuff the Nurse had requested.

After Charilaos finished working on Felix he moved on to the next student who needed his attention. “Come with me”, he told Bellerophon who followed him around from student to student until everyone was taken care of and the dead covered with white linen sheets and ointments according to their burial customs.

Three hours had passed.

Bellerophon, feeling his legs and knees about to give way under him, collapsed onto a chair.

“I never thought a healer’s job could be so…demanding”, he breathed deep sigh.

“When humans like to play war, healers despair”, the Nurse replied, standing above him.

“Felix will be alright?” Bellerophon eyed his sleeping friend worryingly.

“Indeed, Mr. Atreos. Go rest, you’ve earned it. Oh, and two hundred points to the Wonderers for your efforts here today.”

“No, all three houses fought Azrail in Acheron…not only me…”

“Very well, two hundred points for all three houses, now leave. There’s nothing more you can do for anyone right now”, Mr. Ethelotiflos told him, leaving for his rounds.

Felix saw himself in a wooden elongated boat, with a single other person on it, paddling them on a quiet dark river.

Felix rose his gaze to the oarsman, seeing him clothed in a dark brown to black hooded robe.

“Your father was not the only person who had it, the item that is not an item”, the man told him in a hollow, husky voice.

“Lethargos, or is it Charon, Ferryman, Pluto, Yànwàng or who knows what else?” Felix replied with disdain in his voice. “I’ve had enough of your mind games, power games and fucking enigmas. Get. OUT. OF. MY. FUCKING HEAD!” He bellowed in his dream that wasn’t a dream, trying to put up as many mental barriers as he could.

Lethargos said nothing in reply, and the dream ended with Felix waking up.

Sunlight blinded him, his eyes adjusting he saw Bellerophon sitting on a chair next to him, reading a book.

“Did I sleep for a month? Feels like it”, he said groggily.

“Nurse! He’s awake”, Bellerophon called out. A few seconds later Charilaos came with Aristides.

“You had a rough night, Mr. Burton. How are you feeling?” Charilaos told him, checking his temperature and bandaged arm.

“As if I’ve been slammed by a freight train…”, Felix groaned trying to stand up more on the bed.

“I saw what happened through the Pensieve…and I’m sorry for the invasion of your privacy but I needed answers and you were not in a position to give me consent. I only looked at your memory of the battle”, Aristides started saying. “You would have been well placed in Doriis, that was an impressive fight.”

“Impressive or not, a failed one, no?” Felix asked, removing the hair from his face, which he saw were cleaned up from any blood or smut.

“Not in the slightest, why would you think so?” Aristides sat next to him, on the bed’s edge.

“Students died, others are injured or maimed”, Felix said.

“In war there’ll be casualties and injuries and there’s nothing anyone can do to save everyone involved. You and the others prevented Azrail and Bloodfang from killing everyone. You lot did more than force your half-brother to retreat”, Aristides shook his head, replying in as gentle yet assertive voice as he could muster.

“Perhaps, when can I leave?”

“Tomorrow, I want to observe you some more, Mr. Burton, those were life-threatening injuries you sustained yesterday”, the Nurse told him, with him nodding.

“Before I leave, I have a question. Were you taught human transfiguration, animagus transformation and reverse extremities transformation?”

“We worked out animagus with a couple of my friends back in Hogwarts last year, sir. I studied the rest on my own, I find transfiguration fascinating” Felix responded, with a shrug.

“Interesting, I’ll be sure to include it in my report of your time here, Mr. Burton”, Aristides told him, standing up.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I sir?” Felix looked worried.

“Wrong? No, only impressive for a third year in any school of witchcraft and wizardry. Were you a student of mine I’d be making you a Lavarophoros come next year. I’ll leave you to talk with what must be some very eager friends and rest.”

“I don’t feel tired”, Felix tried to sit on the bed’s edge.

“You even contemplate thinking about getting off the bed and I will physically harm you”, the Nurse wagged his right index finger at him, trying to sound serious.

“It frightens me, I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, sir”, Bellerophon joked.

“I don’t joke, and I seldom bluff”, Charilaos told the teenager, trying his best to maintain his serious visage.

“Find Socrates and the others, I’ll need company if I’m not to transform into my leopard form and decide to snack”, Felix told Bellerophon, looking deathly serious.

“Right, two people I can’t read. I ‘ll go fetch the others”, with a pat on Felix’s shoulder, Bellerophon departed.

“Nicely played”, Charilaos chuckled, leaving him alone with Aristides.

“My Prophesy is fulfilled”, Aristides showed him his wrists, the Prophesy’s verses glowing a faint silver hue. “Yours I see has progressed.”

Felix viewed his wrists. “I guess this means I get to die in the third time I fight Azrail, but defeat him?”

“It is a possibility, but I’d not forget what the Oracle told you. That you understand or interpret -her- Prophesy one way, means not there is no other way.”

“The future is not etched in stone?”

Aristides nodded. “Something like that, I’ll see you in the departure ceremony in a few days. Thank you, Felix Burton, Bellerophon yet lives.”

“I-I…it’s him you want to thank, he doesn’t realize it, but he has the ability to inspire people.”

“Interesting, he told me much the same about you, you see in each other what you fail to see in yourselves”, Aristides gave him a smile before leaving.

Bellerophon returned with Socrates, Lydia, Euredeke, Marios and Romanos.

“It would appear, your rites of passage were…a tad more exciting than anticipated”, Socrates cracked a mischievous grin.

“Understatement of the century”, Felix whined. “I feel every bone in my left arm in pain.”

“Ah but my friend, pain makes you feel alive.”

“Great, just great…three people I can’t read”, Bellerophon said.

“Sarcasm, I know”, Socrates told his sister who had opened her mouth to speak.

“Oh, he’s improving. No, don’t you dare reply to this!” They laughed at Bellerophon.

“Is it true? That you can transform into two different animals?” Romanos asked, excited.

“It has to be a rum…holy heck!” Marios exclaimed as Felix looked around for the Nurse, changing first to his leopard form then to his eagle form, then back to his leopard form.

“Fascinating”, Socrates mumbled apprehensively, his eyes locked at the large cat.

“Aaaww...so cute!” Lydia hugged the leopard around its neck. “Holy heck! I’m vibrating!” She laughed as Felix started purring.

Marios extended an arm to caress the soft white fur, but quickly retracted his hand after a snarl from Felix.

Bellerophon laughed aloud.

“No rumour, I can assure you”, Felix said, taking his human form, with a sly smirk.

“I wonder, do two animals reveal a duality in your character?”

“It would not be outside the realm of possibility, my wand has two kinds of wood, two cores, Hawthorn with yew and Unicorn tail hair with chimera mane hair.”

“A battle of wits between light and dark, the struggle eternal. How did you balance it?” Socrates asked him.

“Balance it?” Felix raised an eyebrow.

“It used to disobey you, yes?”

“Frequently”, Felix nodded. “It was very frustrating at times.”

“Somehow you balanced it, I’m guessing you have not found balance within yet, so something else?”

“Oh…maybe the superconductive metal me and Charles placed in a hole the wand had in its rear, the summer before last.”

“I am not familiar with this “superconductive metal”, I will have to research it, but then it is not duality. Now, it becomes three of all.”

“As with everything else in this school?”

“You are not of this school. So, one has to ponder the question; what greater scheme is at work here? Please, tell us everything that happened during Charon’s Path, I find myself irrevocably intrigued.”

“Like a child with ice cream…”, Felix laughed, proceeding to recount the events of the previous day. With Bellerophon filling in gaps and completing sentences and their conversation continuing until the Nurse came to tell them visiting hours were over for the day.


	18. Chapter 18: Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 18: Awakening

The Great Hall glistened under the spring noon sun’s rays. The glass dome’s enchantments portraying moments from the Founders’ lives while in Elysion, and the exchange students were waiting in three columns, behind Aristides to return to their Schools.

“I haven’t much to tell you all, I hope the program exceeded your expectations and helped you learn something new and different while strengthening international ties between our wizarding community. As this was a trial first year it will end before the year’s end. Bid your friends farewell and when you’re ready, touch your school’s model in one of the three stools”, Aristides gave them a concise speech turning his attention to Felix, Bellerophon and the others.

Approaching them, he retrieved a bundle wrapped in light brown leather, and extending his hand he offered it to Felix, who took hold of it with some hesitation.

“It’s weird being back in my Hogwarts robes again after nigh a year in Elysion’s Wonderers’ robes”, he said unwrapping the leather. The item inside felt metallic to the touch and elongated but rather thin and pointy.

“You have earned this. May it serve you better than it did my eldest. Use it well, use it wisely”, Aristides told him with a certain amount of sorrow in his eyes. Bellerophon gave him a pat and a squeeze on his back, smiling.

Removing the leather Felix saw a Xiphos, with a bronze semicircular hilt with a hole in the middle, a straight guard bending slightly towards the stainless-steel blade which had a less curvy cello shape with a large opening in the middle.

It was a dueling Xiphos like the ones Felix had seen used in the School’s grounds a few months ago.

“Th-thank you, sir. What does it do?” Felix held it one hand in the hilt, one carefully on the sharp blade.

“It possesses several defensive and offensive wards, for example it will vibrate if it’s in the presence of someone who is deceiving or lying to you. In the presence of mortal peril it will shine silver but only you will be able to see the glow and it’ll auto-cast several more protective wards around you. It will also severely magnify a spell cast when the wand is placed inside the void in the middle of the blade. One piece of advice, dueling Xiphoi do NOT like water, if you need to clean it use silver oxide”, Aristides told Felix before shaking his hand and leaving.

Felix turned the blade this way and that, examining it better before re-wrapping the leather around it and placing it in his backpack.

He approached his friends, feeling sad he would be leaving them shortly, yet the prospect of returning to Hogwarts and his friends there, was growing in him. Marios shook his hand first. “Don’t become a stranger, yes?”

“I don’t intent to, you lot are as much my best friends as Emerick and Claudia”, Felix nodded.

“I’m not good with goodbyes, but I’ll miss you, friend”, Romanos told him, shaking his hand.

“Likewise”, Felix replied.

“Bye”, Euredeke gave him a quick hug.

“It was an honour my friend, truly. I have taken the decision to join the exchange program in our sixth year, I am sure it’ll be an experience, in Hogwarts”, Socrates shook his hand, then hugged with a kiss on each cheek.

“It’ll be an honour to be your Mentor, if I’m chosen to be. I’ll see you around, Socrates”, Felix hugged him back.

“An absolute certainty, my friend”, Socrates nodded.

Seeing Lydia, Felix smiled warmly, she approached him, placing her hands around his neck and leaned in, closer. “I told you, you have a nice smile”, she whispered in his ear, before leaning in. Felix felt her flower-scented breath on his nose before feeling warm, supple, silky smooth and moist sensation as their lips rubbed together, their breaths mingling. Lydia stayed there, her hands around his neck, his hands instinctively on her cheek and waist, before she pulled back, caressed his cheek and left with a wicked grin plastered all over her face.

“Whatwhowhenwhathowwhat? What!” Felix let out, flustered and blushing a deep crimson colour.

“I told you she fancies you, but does anyone listen to me? Nope!” Bellerophon laughed.

“I did listen, and I have an answer for you on a question you asked me some time ago; I will if you do. I’ll fight”, Felix looked at his friend with a solemn gaze.

Bellerophon nodded back at him, laughter vanished, now with a similar solemn face. “I will be ready, when the time comes”, he told Felix, shaking hands with him. “I will see you again, Felix Burton, En pólemo adelfé.”

“I will see you again, my war brother, brother in arms, best of friends”, Felix hugged him close.

“Before you leave, you have also earned one more thing, other than my brother’s Xiphos”, Bellerophon took out his wand and pointing it to Felix’s head he cast three spells. “There, now you’re officially a Wareater, during times of war”, not feeling any change Felix fumbled around his head. He had a new haircut, his hair cut short, except for several braids starting from his right temple and going behind his ear leading down just below his shoulders. What he couldn’t see where the blond and brown highlights.

He walked closer to the stool with Hogwarts’ portkey model on, turning around to take in the Great Hall one more time. “What an amazing place this is, I will miss it”, he whispered to himself before turning around and taking hold of the model.

He felt the tug and Elysion’s Great Hall vanished beneath his feet. A blink of an eye later he stood in Hogwarts’ Great Hall.

“Welcome back, Mr. Burton. I hope it was a good experience?” Professor Horsewood welcomed him home, giving him a rectangular piece of black-dyed paper with a white P on one side and his name on the other.

“It was what I needed, ma’am”, he replied, taking the piece of paper from her. Leaving the Great Hall, he searched for his friends, it was early afternoon.

“Where is everyone?” Felix wondered to himself, seeing the corridors empty. “It’s way too quiet.”

“Hey, you!” He yelled at a first-year boy from Ravenclaw.

“I haven’t done anything! Here’s my Hall Pass!” The boy stammered back, showing Felix a white piece of paper with his name at the back.

“Uuhh…I didn’t say you did anything, where is everyone?” Felix tried to calm down the panicked boy.

“Where have you been this whole year? I don’t know nothing; can I go now?” The boy asked him, departing.

“Yes, sure…”, the Ravenclaw first -year left. “…what on Earth is going on here?” He headed towards his common room, when a few corridors and a flight of stairs down, he fell on Claudia.

“Claudia! I’m b…”

“Step back! What…Felix? You’re back!” She exclaimed hugging him close and tight. “I’m so angry at you, but we need to get out of the halls.”

“What’s going on?” Felix followed her.

“Not here, let’s find an empty classroom”, she shook her head, opening classroom doors, one after another.

“No, find the others and meet me where we kept our guests last year”, Felix replied, he knew she’d know where he meant.

“You’ll be in trouble if anyone catches you without a pass”, she stopped walking, looking at him.

“Professor Horsewood gave me this when I returned from Elysion, is this okay?” He showed her his black pass.

“Black? I’ve only seen Professors be in the possession of one of those!” Claudia exclaimed taking the black piece of paper in her hands for a moment.

“I don’t know, I’ve literally just returned back from Elysion and Ithake…”

“Long story short, it’s all gone to shite. I’ll find you with the others where we kept our guests. Oh, and if magically enchanted mechanical dog hounds stop you, show them your pass, don’t try to fight them and don’t make any sudden moves, trust me”, she told him before leaving, to find the others.

Half an hour later Claudia, with Emerick, Ethel and Angel found him outside the Room of requirement.

“What happened to your arm?” Emerick asked him, pointing at his fingers where scars showed, the rest of his arm was covered by his school robes.

“Azrail, but we forced him to retreat…somehow”, Felix told him.

“You what? We don’t mail for a week and shit happens!” Claudia exclaimed.

Felix closed his eyes and a second later the room of requirement’s door opened for them.

Felix waited for the door to close shut before speaking. His friends stood around him in a circle. “First things first. I’m sorry I left, and abandoned you to whatever happened, but I’m back now and I no longer want to be afraid. I want to fight. I want to fight Azrail and whatever’s happening here. They want war? Then I’m going to give it to them”, Felix told them, before telling them everything that had happened since he left for Elysion and he couldn’t include in his letters for fear of them being intercepted.

“Never an idle moment, is there?” Angel shook his head in disbelief.

“I’m done being afraid, will you fight with me, come what may?” Felix asked them, extending his hand in front of them.

“I’m still angry with you, but yes, I’m in”, Claudia replied, placing her hand above his. “Come what may.”

“I’m in”, Emerick placed his hand on top of his and Claudia’s. “Come what may.”

“I don’t have much time left in Hogwarts as I graduate this year, but I’ll help as best I can from the outside, I’m in”, Angel said placing his hand on top of theirs. “Come what may.”

“I’m in”, Ethel followed suit. “Come what may.”

“Now, can someone please, fill me in?” Felix asked, placing his hands in his pockets.

“Hudson has the full run of the place, Horsewood has not been seen since the start of the year, he hates kids, Hudson does, although we don’t know why. Professor Morgana is our only ally as he is going about removing all the fun from this place. His mechounds have the ability to read peoples’ minds and transfer information to him, they are his thought police. They can also inflict pain, punishment, and there’s no evading them or destroying them, at least no one’s been able to, even seventh years. Detention with Hudson is revisiting all our worst memories for hours on end, and he’s assembling a “Detection squad” of people to patrol the corridors because apparently Prefects don’t do the job right. Every day a new edict removes or changes something. Horsewood either can’t or won’t do nothing because there’s no Ministry and the Board of Governors want her head, and if Hudson is placed as Headmaster god save us all”, Claudia said in nearly one breath.

“The Resistance starts today!” Ethel exclaimed, raising her clenched fist up in the air.


	19. Chapter 19: Curseweaver’s Apprentice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 19: Curseweaver’s Apprentice.

“No, too cliché, we can call it Students of Hogwarts, and we’ll resist plenty, but we’ll do it clever. Banging our heads against a wall that possesses all authority will avail us nothing”, Felix shook his head, retrieving his wand and the Xiphos from his backpack. He placed his wand inside it, feeling power course through it. “I promised a friend I’ll fight, and I will. But we’ll do it my way”, Felix furrowed his eyebrows in an evil grin.

“I never thought I’d see a real Dueling Xiphos up close”, Angel said in awe. Felix let him handle it, checking out the runes on its blade and giving it a swing or two.

“It’s a gift, and one I intent to honour”, Felix took it back.

“True…you’ve changed”, Ethel told him, with a smirk.

“And not just the haircut!” Emerick agreed, smiling, hands in his pockets. “I dig it by the way.”

“Oooof course you do…I guess it’s not completely horrible”, Claudia said, making Felix eye roll.

“What do you intent to do about your siblings?”

“No siblings, just Azrail, he killed Ernaline last summer…as for Azrail, when do we have DaDa next?” Felix asked.

“Tomorrow, first class. Why?” Claudia replied.

“You’ll see, my brother wants war? He’ll have it, in three parts. Part one comes tomorrow, part two will be us finding out everything about him, why he wants what he wants, where, when and how he learned about the Old Gods items and how they connect to each other, everything. As for part three, we have to wait for news from my lawyer, but soon I think based on a letter from him about a couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, okay then”, Claudia shrugged, she looked at Ethel and Emerick who shrugged their shoulders not knowing what Felix was up to either.

“How’s Alfred? He has not replied to any of my letters”, Felix tried to hide the bitterness and sadness he felt at his cousin’s refusal to acknowledge his letters.

“He is angry at the world, and while he has some friends he hangs out with, he and you are in the same boat, as he has not been able to correspond with his parents at all the past year, which is making him extra…bratty…”, Claudia told him, trying to hide her frustration at Alfred’s pissy behaviour.

“Quidditch?” Felix moved on.

“Slytherin is first, Gryffindor is second, Hufflepuff is third and Ravenclaw fourth”, Angel replied.

“Your guys have not pulled any punches, though”, Emerick added. “They’ve won some games, lost some, really good games all of them, Ravenclaw lost both to them, Gryffindor won one lost one and Slytherin won both, which along with their Ravenclaw victories gives us first place, they have this new she-captain our year who seems very…determined to beat everyone.”

“Next two years will be challenging…but come seventh-year, if Azrail hasn’t had his wish by then, I intent to win for sure”, Felix told them.

Angel took his wrists in his hands lifting his robes’ sleeves up, exposing his Prophesy-tattoos inked around his hands and arms going behind to his nape.

“I had heard of Hellada’s pictomagicology and how it worked with their Prophesies and stuff…but I did not think I’d ever get to see it up close”, he said looking at the verses written in black, silver and gold in Felix’s skin.

“They are weird to have on, I felt them burn and etch my skin when the spider-silk threads wrapped around my hands, yet now I don’t even feel them there. Sometimes, if I close my eyes and empty my mind I can sort of hear Achronia’s voice reciting the verses.”

“Fascinating, is it only the verses of the Prophesy involving you written in here or is there more?” Angel asked Felix, letting go of his hands.

“As far as I know only “my” Prophesy, what glows gold has come to pass, what glows silver is to come and what doesn’t glow at all is either not in the immediate future…or not at all in my future…Hellenic Oracles have a thing about vagueness I guess”, Felix said lowering his robes’ sleeves.

They continued to talk for another hour before returning to their common rooms.

Next morning Felix ate breakfast in the Great Hall, before heading to Defense against the Dark arts classroom. In the Great Hall entrance and patrolling the corridors he saw students dressed in ankle-long black and red hooded trench coats, holding their wands in one hand. Each squad had three such students and two mechounds or mechanical enchanted dog-like robots reaching to the height and resembling of a German Shepard. The mechanical creature was comprised of several parts made from metal joined together with magic and a pair of red iron ferrite orbs for eyes.

The students, all, wore their hoods even if they were inside.

Felix entered the classroom, there was a seat vacant next to Claudia, everyone else sat in their chairs, looking at the blackboard next to the Professor’s desk in the front. Professor Jordan must have just entered the classroom for he was arranging some books on his desk, the class not having started yet. Anneke sat next to Ariana and Emerick on Claudia’s other side next to Ethel.

The cloudy sunshine outside cast god rays inside, through the stained-glass windows giving the curved room a peculiar light.

“welcome back, Mr. Burton”, Professor Jordan told him, raising his head from his books, and seeing him standing in the doorway. “I hear you had quite the adventure in Hellada and Elysion.”

People turned to see Felix, some gasping at the physical changes about him, in the few months Felix had been away he had put on height, muscle, his hair were now different, and the Prophesy verses glowed under his robes all along his arms and neck.

Felix walked to the vacant seat next to Claudia. “Yes, sir. May I ask you a question? One I’ve been pondering on for a couple of years now?” Felix asked, leaving his backpack on the desk.

“Ask away, Mr. Burton”, Professor Jordan told him, coming to the front of his desk, next to the blackboard and in front of the cupboard containing the Boggart. All eyes were on them two.

“Is it true you are the three times world champion duelist known as “Curseweaver”?” Felix asked him.

“No, please take your seat so we can…”, Professor Jordan replied after a short pause.

“I’ve been wondering for a while now, why the need for two Professors for this class, one for the three first years, you for the fourth to seventh years”, Felix interrupted him. “And I think I have the answer.”

“Do enlighten us then, Mr. Burton”, Professor Jordan challenged him calmly.

In a lightning fast move Felix retrieved his wand from his pocket and pointing it at the Boggart door behind Professor Jordan he made it swing wide open, with a spell.

In a blink, the Boggart was out and spinning wildly until locking on to Professor Jordan it shapeshifted into Azrail, smirking evilly, wand in hand. “Yeah, thought so. He defeated you once as Curseweaver in the tournament you lost your tittle to him, a mere boy of thirteen years old, and the second time in his seventh year in the library. We do Boggarts in year three. I desire only one thing, sir. One day sooner or later I am going to have to fight Azrail, again. It is written in the Prophesy”, Felix revealed his arms, pulling his sleeves up. “And he is either going to kill me, or I am going to kill him. So, I want you to teach me how to duel. I want you to teach me how to kill him.”

If Felix had dropped warheads in the classroom there’d have been far less deafening silence thereafter than the deafening amount there was now.

Professor Jordan made a complex motion with his wand and the Boggart vanished inside the cupboard without him needing to Redikulus’ it. Turning around he locked eyes with Felix.

“I will teach you how to duel, but I will not teach you the killing curse, even if it wasn’t illegal and immoral I would not, you need it not to defeat Azrail or anyone else”, Ives Jordan told him.

“I don’t want to defeat him, sir. For murdering my cousin, I want him dead by my wand,”, Felix replied taking his seat, and getting things out of his backpack.

“Felix, stay behind”, Professor Ives told him, after the lesson on red caps and counter-jinxes was over.

Professor waited until the classroom was empty, Felix sat in his seat, stuff in his backpack. Backpack on his left shoulder.

“You are correct, Mr. Burton. In a previous lifetime I was Curseweaver, greatest of all duelists. Then a kid no older than you defeated me in a tournament while his friend murdered my soulmate in my home”, Professor Jordan leaned against his desk.

“From duelist to Hogwarts Professor”, Felix pondered aloud.

“A friend asked me to join the faculty. So, I did. After classes end today meet me outside by the drawbridge”, Professor Jordan replied.

“Yes, sir”, Felix nodded, leaving the classroom.

“That’s part One?” Claudia waited for him outside the classroom, and she wasn’t alone.

“Yes, and it only gets worse…for Azrail”, Felix replied, looking at Anneke’s face who seemed as shocked as everyone else.

They headed to Greenhouse four for their advanced lesson on gravity-resilient trees from Nepal. Most students found them funny, seeing trees which floated in the air, feeding from whatever particles of food and water vapour their roots gathered from the air currents, while at the same time never being swept away as if rooted in the soil below.

The trees grown in Britain never surpassed the size of a shrub due to the lack of low temperatures, high-speed wind, and sun, whereas in Nepal and the Himalayas they could grow up to thirty meters in height, spreading their roots and branches outwards lateral to the wind currents, forming intricate pathways through the wind, aiding one another in trapping what they needed to survive above-soil.

In Potions, their next class of the day, Felix gave a presentation of the potion Styx, with the classroom and Professor Marvey asking questions after. The presentation and answers Felix provided in the questions gave him ten points to Hufflepuff. What surprised him was how accustomed he had become to Elysion’s airy and sunny Potions classroom and how depressed Hogwarts’ gloomy, torch-lit dungeon classroom made him.

For the rest of the lesson Professor Marvey had them revise theory on antidotes and antidote-making.

Their final class for the day was Transfiguration, and as Felix found out everyone was deathly afraid of Professor Hudson, so much so that, except for Anneke, who had joined his Guard squads, everyone else even hesitated to enter the classroom.

Once in the classroom Felix soon understood why. Professor Hudson did not hesitate to use information he had gathered from prying in students’ minds during detention against them during class to make them submit to his authoritarian will, and those students who had joined his Guards would reinforce that by laughing at every which embarrassing or private detail displayed in his Pensieve-ring. A metal ring suspended mid-air through which Professor Hudson showed memories he had grabbed from peoples’ minds.

They were nearing the end of the lesson when Professor Hudson mentioned animagus in his lecture of human-transfiguration theory, something they would not be learning until their sixth year.

“I heard you are an animagus, Mr. Burton. Why are you not registered with the Ministry?” Professor Hudson asked him in a silent classroom, all students sitting perfectly still, other than taking notes, making not even the slightest movements or sounds.

“The Ministry had been destroyed when I learned how to animagus, on my own, and I am unaware of any school registrar in Hogwarts, sir”, Felix replied in a calm fashion.

“You still used it without authorization, five points from Hufflepuff”, Professor Hudson admonished him.

“Elysion’s Archontas…. Headmaster did not mind me doing so sir, what with me using it to repel Azrail, and save a bunch of students from certain death, including me and the Headmaster’s son. I’ve not done so in Hogwarts that you can prove, sir. Those five points belong in Hufflepuff”, Felix rebutted him without sign of fear or caution.

“I can find proof if I so desire Mr. Burton, in your mind”, Professor Hudson’s voice increased in both anger and volume.

“That’d be illegal sir, not to mention immoral, I thought you were a bastion of law abidingness, sir”, Felix did not seem to notice, or he ignored it.

“Illegal until I have proper cause and you’re in detention”, Hudson snarled at him.

Felix made eye contact for the first time. “I wonder, sir. Would you enforce and oppress the Governors’ laws and rules on us so religiously if you knew them for the criminal scum they all are?”

“I will urge you, Mr. Burton to not speak unfounded allegations towards pillars of the wizarding community without concrete proof”, Hudson replied, clearly angry at Felix for his accusations towards the people who had given him the job.

Felix’s rose-purple lips curved in an evil grin, his eyes coming more together and his head tilting a little forward, “Oh, I’ll find proof, worry not, sir”, his hands kneaded together on the desk.

“You will? How when Azrail has control of the Gaunt family estate!” Anneke replied on impulse.

“He has?” Felix gave a short, sarcastic guttural chuckle from his throat full of bile.

“Until then I will urge you caution in slandering good peoples’ names”, Professor Hudson replied with a finality in his voice.

“Yes, sir. And when I do find you that concrete proof?” Felix asked.

“Find it and we’ll talk”, the mechounds positioned at the classroom’s entrance and in front of Hudson’s desk gave a mechanical sound emulating a threatening growl.

Professor Hudson carried on with his lesson.

“Are you nuts?!” Claudia asked him after class was over and they had exited the classroom. “You just revealed your plans to everyone!”

“Am I? I was under the impression I was telling people exactly what I want them to hear, and I have my reasons. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Professor Jordan awaits me by the drawbridge”, Felix replied, leaving for the Grand staircase.

Felix exited the staircase in the ground floor, passed in front of the Great Hall’s entrance and Alfred who had seen him and was trying to avoid him by not exiting the Great Hall, and made his way outside where thick dark clouds were pouring rain by the gallon.

Professor Jordan was waiting for him, leaning against the drawbridge’s stone wall, hands crossed in front of his chest.

“Sir”, Felix said, standing next to him. Professor Jordan straightened up.

“From now on, during our training you are not Felix, you are my apprentice, and I demand blind obedience, but before that I need you to demonstrate to me the level of your determination. You are to run the school’s circumference, without pause, complain or stop until I tell you otherwise”, Professor Jordan motioned for him to begin running.

“It’s pouring cats and dogs”, Felix commented.

“Yes, Azrail, can we please duel another time because right now it’s raining…”, Professor Jordan mocked without any trace of laughter in his face.

“Good point”, Felix replied.

“Yes, it is. Now, start running.”

Felix walked outside the drawbridge and started running on the muddy puddled soil. It was four in the afternoon when he started and by the time Professor Jordan told him to stop he had lost sense of time or how many laps around the school he had run, or just how completely soaked he was from the non-stop rain.

“You may stop, I have but one condition for training you and it is not negotiable”, Professor Jordan told him, throwing him a white towel he conjured out of thin air.

“Obedience?” Felix asked, panting, and dripping water from head to toe, lowering his robes’ hood.

“That’s a requirement. No, my condition is this; if and when you fight your half-brother, Marigold is mine and mine alone. I have a blood-oath to settle”

“Okay, when do we start training, sir?” Felix gave an affirmative nod, trying to dry himself with the towel, forgetting he could cast a spell for it.

“Training?” It was Professor Jordan whose lips formed an evil smile, this time. “There won’t be any training, apprentice of mine, I am not going to train you or teach you to duel. Dueling is an artform, I am going to create you. Go wash up, and sleep, because from tomorrow, every day weekends included we will work from seven in the evening to midnight. I expect your marks not to degrade because of this.”

“They won’t, sir.”


	20. Chapter 20: Students of Hogwarts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 20: Students of Hogwarts

Claudia saw Felix emerge from behind the gargoyle guarding the Headmistress’ office door, she herself was exiting the charms classroom.

“I didn’t forget a class or something, did I?” Felix asked her, worried and anxious, black circles under his eyes.

“My days you look…exhausted. I was just asking Professor Stephenson a few questions for our upcoming exams”, she replied.

“What upcoming exams? End-of-the-year exams are a month away”, Felix asked, even more worried and confused now.

“That’s around the corner. Has Hudson done his mental magic on you or something?” She asked him, looking stressed over his apparent tiredness level.

“Professor Jordan has been having me run, do pull ups and pushups every day for hours on end for four weeks now, while at the same time teaching me Legilimency and occlumency, and no, I’m not exhausted I am way past it in levels I didn’t know possible”, Felix sighed.

“Legilimency? I mean I can understand Occlumency, but why Legilimency?”

“Because and I quote, “Both Occlumency and Legilimency can be used for defense as well as offense. With enough control of one’s consciousness one can mislead, defend, attack, control, unhinge, misdirect, and even crash a less concentrated mind or plant memories, emotions and feelings which may not stand upon greater scrutiny but may give one an advantage in a duel. A mind in complete disarray can neither attack you nor defend against your attacks”, at least that’s the theory, for now I keep trying to learn how to stop Professor Jordan from invading my mind while at the same time exhausting me physically”, Felix told Claudia in a strained, frustrated voice.

“Have you had any success with it? I hear it’s not easy.”

“Understatement of the century, and no, I think if Professor Jordan wanted he could destroy my brain or something, but so help me Merlin’s beard I will learn it…I mean casting Legilimency requires some relatively hard wand-shape-motion and pronunciation, but it’s okay once you learn those. I guess it becomes harder when you’re trying to break through a proficient occlumens’ mental barriers. Occlumency is by far harder to achieve, requires insane amounts of constant practice and dedication. Emptying your mind and raising mental barriers Is only but a small part of perfecting the “art” of it. You need to control your thoughts, your emotions, and feelings as well as your memories all throughout the other person’s attempt of invading your mind and at the same time try to invade their mind without losing control. Fucking nightmare, I tell you. I’ve had Professor Jordan roaming my mind more times than I’d like to admit or would have ever wanted. So, no, I’m not exhausted, I want to crawl up in a small corner and die from sleeping so much my brain forgets to wake up because at the same time I have to read for the exams because if my grades fall Professor Jordan will stop training me or whatever it is we’re doing when he’s playing ping pong with my brain”, Felix said in one breath, very quickly and with increasing angst in his voice.

“So, all’s peachy then!” Claudia tried to cheer him up, in vain. “In other news what are we going to do about Professor Tyrant?”

“Hudson? I don’t know, I was thinking we gather and discuss it in our final Hogsmeade visit of the year, or something”, Felix shrugged a reply.

“You haven’t seen the edicts wall outside the Great Hall, have you?” Felix shook his head. “Come with me, then.” He followed her from the third floor and the charms classroom through the moving stairs of the Grand Staircase to the wall next to the Great Hall’s entrance, where Hudson’s edicts, each framed in silver, were pinned.

Claudia pointed at one of them with her right hand. “Because of increasingly decreasing grades amongst the students, all Hogsmeade visits, present and future, are hereby suspended indefinitely by order of the Deputy Headmaster, Professor Hudson”, Felix read it.

“They are not, are they?” He asked Claudia looking at her. Light was shining at them through the Great Hall’s open doors and cathedral-like stained glass windows.

“It doesn’t matter, Hudson is ruining this place, and with Headmistress Horsewood taking care not to get fired he is just doing whatever he so pleases without any kind of resistance from anyone.

“He’s acting like he wants to ruin the fun of being a student in this School, I know how to deal with him. Who would you say are the most influential and popular kids years three to six?” Felix did not look as worried about Deputy Headmaster Hudson as Claudia had hoped he’d be after he saw the edicts’ wall.

“Ariana, me and you in our year, Fatherspoon and Crawford from year three, Nash and Haley in year five and Camdensky and Rayden in year six. Why?” Claudia asked, curious as to why Felix wanted to know.

“Not much we can do about this particular problem this year but come next year we’ll need them to bring everyone on board with what I have in mind, because make no mistake we’ll need everyone to forget whatever petty differences between them, and the Houses and work together to pull this one off. There’s only one experiment I want to conduct now, where can I find me a mechounds?” Felix asked her, looking giddy at the prospect.

“Why on Earth would you want to find one of those!” Claudia exclaimed, surprised and astonished.

“To see what it takes to destroy one, of course”, Felix cackled forming an impish grin with his mouth, and eyes.

“Of course,…wait what! No, no, no!” Claudia run after him, wide-eyed, trying to dissuade him from finding much less fighting a mechound.

Felix, hands in pockets, headed to the clockwork courtyard, where students always liked to gather and sit on the grass around the fountain, in sunny days like this one.

Entering the cloistered courtyard Felix looked left and right, searching. Seeing a Guards squad with a fourth year and two mechounds he grinned slightly.

“Claudia, I feel like resting by the fountain, don’t you?” He told her, loudly before lowering his voice. “Which subject would you say would be the toughest to get good grades in, this year?”

“Transfiguration, without a doubt”, Claudia replied, having resigned of being able to change Felix’s mind.

Felix nodded and took a seat by the fountain’s marble edge on the courtyard’s far side, right next to the Guards squad.

“So, yeah, I’ve been reading a lot on transfiguration. You know it’s supposed to be the toughest subject this year, but I don’t know why, it all seems so easy to me. I guess it’s the extensive notes I’ve taken down in my mind”, Felix baited, speaking loud.

“Right, no one knows how to get grades off him, except you. I guess being an animagus will help”, Claudia played along.

“I’ve memorized all of the important bits and…”, Felix turned his head left and right quickly, in a conspiratorial way before leaning in to whisper in Claudia’s ear.

After about a minute of him telling her about the weather he felt it, someone probing his mind. “Time to see what I’ve learned:, he thought to himself before committing his mind to placing mental barriers and controlling his emotions, feelings, emptying his mind and luring the invader into the most painful of his memories of youth, memories of excruciating physical and psychological pain and suffering. “Like what you see?” He asked the fourth year without speaking.

Before the boy could react, he spun around, wand in hand. “Depulso!” As if hit by an invisible wall, the fourth year, spike-black haired Slytherin boy fell backwards, dragged along the grass uprooting and disturbing the soil.

“Confrigo ultima!” Felix turned his wand at the nearest of the two mechounds, blowing it up to pieces. In the blink of an eye it reassembled itself, pieces mending and gluing together.

The second mechound made a mechanical sound electrocuting him while invading his mind searching for and attacking him with his own nightmares and memories of pain and suffering.

“Protego! Aegis protegia!” Felix cast protective spell after protective spell. The mechound’s electrocution spell blasted sideways, impacted on Felix’s protego blue-hued barrier, with the mind-invasion Legilimency spell penetrating through it.

“Finite energia!” Felix made a circular motion with his wand before stabbing at the second mechound. It fell to the ground as if the enchantment bonds keeping it together were broken, only to reassemble itself a few seconds later.

Felix felt electricity course through him as both mechounds hit him with electrocution spells, dropping him to his knees. His backpack was sent flying with the Xiphos falling out of it.

“Claudia! Pl-lace your wan-d in the hole in th-e middle and use it to c-ast spells!” Felix cried out, his teeth grinding from the jolt of electricity.

Placing her wand in the middle of the blade she pointed the Xiphos at one of the two mechounds. “Finite Incantatem!” The mechound gave a plop sound, and with its enchantments dissolved it crumbled to the ground.

The second mechound, sensing what happened, ceased its electrocution spell on Felix, turning to face Claudia who removed her wand from the Xiphos and threw it to Felix.

“Exaérosis energia ultima!” Felix placed his wand in the Xiphos. His spell caught the second mechound straight in its mechanical torso, melting it and the wall five meters behind it. The blast’s shockwave sent them flying backwards.

The fourth year Slytherin boy was rising to his feet and was sent up against one of the fountain’s eagle statues, dropping him unconscious.

“Well, that worked!” Felix laughed, stuffing the Xiphos back inside his backpack and his wand inside his right-hand sleeve.

“Let’s get out of here!” Claudia grabbed him by his left wrist, pulling him away from the courtyard, students were either running away from the scene or cheering them.

“You think I’m an influential person in our year, or the school? Ain’t I the reject? Azrail’s brother?” Felix asked, feeling dumbfounded by the information.

“Seriously! That’s what you want to know right now? You are Azrail’s brother, Cillian’s son, and you have resisted them both and you are the only one who has managed to push him back”, she replied as they run through the viaduct, under the glorious May sun. “So, yeah you’ve gone from pariah to popular. Not to mention your victories with Hufflepuff last year and winning you guys your first Quidditch and House cup in god knows how many decades, and you saved Emerick’s life before that, exposed your father’s control of the Headmistress, helped protect Hogwarts and the students from that whole affair last year involving the anti-pure-blood movement, you’ve worked your arse off for this newfound popularity, realize it or not.”

“I guess so…well, we now know what it takes to destroy them mechounds. No one thought to use Finite Incantatem on them before?”

“No, I guess not…not the most obvious thing? Way too obvious? Never mind that, what is that thing we used back there?” She pointed at his backpack. “And more importantly, how do I get my hands on one?” She blinked her eyelashes rapidly as they entered the ground floor’s east side through the greenhouses entrance.

“It’s a Dueling Xiphos from Hellada, it was used by the Hellenic Aurors or Polemofagoi for more than two thousand years up until the Hellenic Ministry was destroyed, and it was a gift from Archon Atreos. It can magnify a spell’s power output, amongst other uses it has”, Felix explained, as they walked to their last lesson of the day, Potions.

“I’m glad you two decided to show up, sit”, Professor Marvey told them in a singsong voice. Shutting the door behind them they took two of the free seats vacant nearest to them. “We are revising potions we learned this year, take out your notes, please.”

The lesson had just finished, and students had left, Claudia and Felix had remained behind as Claudia wanted to talk to Professor Marvey, when Professor Hudson stormed in the classroom, the door flung ajar with a loud bang as it hit the wall behind. The fourth-year Slytherin boy followed hm looking scared and timid.

“These two! Are these two the ones responsible for the destruction of two of my mechounds? George?” Hudson pivoted around, hands in his waist, looking menacing at the Slytherin boy, the one from the courtyard.

“Y-yes sir, I-I think so…”, George replied, his amber eyes lowering to the floor under the two Professors’ intense scrutiny.

“They are not, whatever you want to accuse them wrongly for, they have been here throughout the class”, Professor Marvey lied without even batting an eyelash. “Why are you lying, boy!” She pierced him even more intensely with her gaze.

Felix felt bad for George, who looked positively terrified and as if he wanted for the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

“I-I don’t know ma’am! I- the explosion, I don’t feel too good…”, George bend over and puked all over the floor and his shoes.

“Useless, go to the infirmary”, Hudson left glaring at Morgana, Felix and Claudia.

George run out, leaving the three of them alone in the low-lit classroom.

“Right, why did I just have to alter George’s memory on the fly in front of one of two people in this school who can get me fired, as well as lie to Hudsey-Dumsey?” Morgana asked them as she threw a vial on the floor. A viscous brown liquid spilled over cleaning up George’s vomit.

“We figured out how to destroy the Mechounds! Finite incantantem…or an explosion spell Felix did, aerosomething?”

“Exaérosis, it’s a Hellenic spell which packs quite the punch”, Felix said, with a smirk.

“Of course, easiest solution…right, off you go” Professor Marvey started tidying up the classroom for her next class.

“We need to learn more about Professor Hudson”, Felix told Claudia, exiting the classroom. “Come next year we’ll deal with it, for now we’re too close to summer vacations to do anything.”

“If he doesn’t cancel them!” Claudia joked.

Felix looked around the empty dungeons’ corridor. “The people I asked you about earlier, do you think they’d come to a meeting if you asked them to?”

“Most yeah, Arianna…I don’t know. She’s been very silent and remote this year, I can’t gauge her reaction”, Claudia told him, pushing her hair behind her head, her blue eyes sparkling against the torch-light.

“Try and get them to come, all of them, Arianna included”, Felix nodded.

“What’ll be the meeting about?”

“The future of Hogwarts and its studentship.”

“Right, when and where?”

“Right under the enemy’s nose, transfiguration classroom tomorrow at midnight”, Felix’s lips cracked in a wicked grin.

“I’ll pass it along.”


	21. Chapter 21:  Declaration of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 21: Declaration of War

The full moon’s silver light illuminated his way ascending the Grand Staircase’s stairs making the people in the paintings acquire a silver hue in their sleep in their canvases.

A sound startled him out of his clothes and skin, spinning around, wand in hand, he saw a dark-skinned, frizzy-haired girl snore, on her side on top of plush orange pillows under a wooden gazebo with jasmine flowers hanging from its intricate-patterned ceiling.

“Bloody hell, the black lady snores loudly!” Swearing under his breath he continued ascending the stairs in tiptoe so as to not awaken any of the Grand Staircase portraits or their denizens.

An owl hooted, perched on top of the Ground Floor Grand Staircase entranceway. “Must have come in for the warmth, I guess.” It was a chilly night for May, the temperature not surpassing Fifteen degrees Celsius with a breeze.

He rushed to the Transfiguration classroom down the dark corridor and through an arched pathway. He gave the door two solid knocks.

“Marco”, a male voice whispered from inside.

“Not Pollo”, Felix replied in a loud whisper. The door creaked open, Angel’s face appeared, then Emerick’s.

“Hey, everything ready?” Felix asked, entering the classroom.

“Aye, banner and all”, Angel replied, pointing at a trigonal banner behind him with Hogwarts’ emblem and “students” under it. “Finite Incantatem does work on the beasts!”

“Nice, and yeah, it does. Also, as I just found out coming out of the common room, mechounds can’t detected animals or animagused people, I had to change and the mechound just passed by me as if I didn’t exist there”, Felix replied.

“Finite Animagi”, Felix cast it around the room. “Can never be too sure.”

“Right”, Angel started non-verbally casting protective wards and spells.

Ten minutes later someone knocked on the door, twice.

“Marco”, Felix called out.

“Not Pollo”, Claudia’s voice came on the other end. Felix opened the door to see two boys accompany her. “Felix, Uriel Fatherspoon and Jason Crawford”, the two boys nodded at him. Felix nodded back.

Thirty minutes later everyone, but Arianna was there. Felix was about to start talking when another two knocks came from behind the closed door.

“Marco”, Felix whispered, hesitantly.

“Not Pollo”, a female voice whispered back, only one person was missing.

Felix opened the door to Arianna’s green eyes looking at him, her freckled face showing behind long straight dark brown hair. Felix showed her in.

“What’s she doing here?” Crawford snarled at Arianna.

“What we all are, I asked her here. Crawford, you weren’t here when I was much in the same position as you’ve just placed her, judged not by my deeds but of my family’s. Shove it…aside, put aside whatever personal petty differences you might feel for her, because it’s not what we’re here for”, Felix told him, closing the door behind Arianna. “We are here for Hogwarts and all its students, even the ones that disagree with us and have joined Professor Hudson’s Guards squads.” They sat around the round table Angel and Emerick had prepared for the occasion.

Crawford sat down without further reply.

“We have not all helped visibly, but we have. I’m not here to betray you or cause trouble, I’m here to help rid of the tyrant that is Professor Hudson and those who put him there…if I can”, Arianna said her part. “And I am aware that one of those people is my father.”

“That’s easy, we bust some he…”, Crawford started saying.

“Heads? You really think you could defeat Professor Hudson through brute force or a duel? You have no knowledge of what he’s capable of, his abilities or his strengths and weaknesses. He is most likely going to cream the floor with your face, and he won’t even break a sweat, he’s an accomplished wizard and you’re a child”, Felix cut him off.

“If the rumours are true, you managed to defeat Azrail, in Hellada. You are a child as well”, Crawford fired back at him.

“I wasn’t alone, and I damn nearly died, two students died in the process and many more were injured and maimed. We won’t accomplish anything with violence. At best we get expelled, at worst? Azkaban, dead…we will not divide Hogwarts again. We are the Students of Hogwarts, dividing it won’t be our legacy for the students who come after us”, Felix laid it on Crawford.

“What is your plan, then?” Stephanie Nash asked him, her interest peaked.

“In short? You…we are students who are influential with the others. I want us to gather information, what is Hudson capable of, and why he hates kids so much. We find out that and…”, Crawford cut him off.

“And what? Let us rebel. The Headmistress can bail us out, after.”

“No, she won’t. She can’t even if we assume she’d want to”, Felix was becoming frustrated with Crawford’s thickness.

“Why ever not!” The boy protested.

“You incite such a rebellion, have students fight a Professor and Hogwarts’ Deputy Headmaster and you think what? We’ll be getting a medallion? We’ll have broken pretty much all of the school’s rules and laws. Professor Horsewood wouldn’t be able to prevent the Governors from expelling our arses even if she’d wanted to, or the Governors would have her head on a pike before the end of day. That’s what they want, don’t you get it? They found the most law-abiding kid-hating person they could get their hands on and hired him to destroy this place from the inside out. And if the Headmistress intervenes she gets fired and he becomes Headmaster. Do you want Hudson as Headmaster with no one of higher rank able to stop him? It’s a powerplay, a mind game, you won’t win anything with brute force. Hudson isn’t evil, such hatred towards kids comes from something, but it isn’t evil. He’s a powerful tool being used by dishonorable men with dishonorable intentions to wreak havoc. Don’t blame the sledgehammer for hurting your head, blame the one who wields it. You want to get expelled and help him gain cause to fledge out more edicts? Go right ahead, but I won’t help you”, Felix told him.

“What do you propose, instead?” Gabriel Rayden asked him.

“We gather information and come September we give him rope to hang himself. Either that or I’ll find dirt proving just what kind of Masters he’s serving and then their tool becomes their death sentence. I need all of you to use your influence with the other students to make sure they don’t go and act like Jason wants to. He wants us to bend to his will? Let us make him think we have, if you followed the Quidditch cup last year you know my strategy can work, if it’s followed”, Felix told them. “Are you in?”

“I am”, Arianna spoke first, standing up.

One by one they all agreed, joining Felix’s strategy.

A toad croaked.

Felix gave Angel a nod who waved his wand with a non-verbal spell extending his hand up and a symbol appeared mid-air floating above their heads. An H circled with four wands, one wand per House Colour.

“This is who we are, what our legacy will be about, all Houses united under one goal”, taking care to not be spotted they exited the classroom, leaving the banner and the symbol there for Hudson to find come morning.

Professor Hudson had no idea what the symbol and the banner meant, when he entered the classroom the next morning, he did not know of their significance or importance or the trouble he had gotten himself in. He dispersed the floating symbol using Deletrius and went about his business.

Two weeks later, amidst the start of the end-of-year exams Felix sat in the Hufflepuff table, revising during breakfast when he heard the Great Hall’s doors open. A few seconds later a shadow hid his light. Looking up from his notes and the textbook he saw Professor Horsewood standing above him.

“Come with me, please”, she turned walking away without waiting for a reply from Felix. Stuffing his stuff in his backpack and the last bits of the toast in his mouth he followed her out of the Great Hall, up the Grand Staircase, the sun’s rays coming through the vertically rectagonal cathedral stained-glass windows, and to the Gargoyle guarding the entrance to her office.

“Rainbow sprinkles”, she told the Gargoyle and it started spinning clockwise upwards revealing the spiral stairs below it.

They ascended the stairs and entered her office to see Ian McCormack, Felix’s lawyer and friend of Claudia’s father sitting in one of the armchairs, in front of the Headmistress’ dark oak coloured desk, the varnish making it glisten and reflect the room.

Felix took his eyes from behind it and the large telescope to Mr. McCormack’s serious face.

“Hello, sir”, Felix greeted him, extending his hand to the man.

“Good morning, Felix”, Ian replied, standing up and shaking his hand. “I received your letter, are you sure about this? Even with the Ministry rebuilt I can’t guarantee your safety if you go ahead with your plan.”

“Yes, sir. I am sure, absolutely sure in fact”, Felix sat in the armchair opposite his lawyer, Professor Horsewood walked around sitting in her chair.

“And I can’t change your mind?”

“In the case of my death, it’s set? My mum, Charles’ family and the victims’ families share everything? Azrail gets nothing?” Felix asked his lawyer.

“Yes, now that the Ministry is up and running…at least some of the bureaucracy is, that’s been settled.”

“Then no, there’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”

“Can I ask that at least either I or your mother vet the questions before hand?”

“No, this is going to be authentic, and I don’t care for what they ask me”, Felix shook his head. “I want it done in public as well, not in here or in the Manor.”

“Stubborn as heck…very well, if I can’t stop you I’ll be there.”

“No, sorry sir, but no. I need you getting the rest of it done, is it done?”

“Yes, as of yesterday Azrail no longer has access or right to the family’s money in Gringotts’ or the vaults. It’ll take longer for some of the rest of it to finalize like casting the spell that expels all unauthorized or unwanted individuals from your property.”

“Good…Azrail won’t spend another Knut to harm people. Is there anything else, sir?”

“Other than being frustrated I can’t change your mind on this…no”, Felix gave him half an impish grin shaking his hand again as the man stood to leave. “Professor Horsewood, always good to see you, ma’am.”

“Likewise, Mr. McCormack, my greetings to your lovely grandma.”

“Will do, ma’am.” Ian left.

“Are you sure you want the Great Hall for tomorrow? Everyone will be staring, I can giv…”

“Thank you, ma’am, but the Great Hall is great, I want everyone to see me, I have nothing left to hide.”

“As you so wish, Mr. Burton…good luck.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Felix left the Headmistress office for his next exams. Transfiguration.

Later that day Claudia found him leaning against the drawbridge’s handrail gazing out at the horizon and the black lake.

“Hey, what’s up? You look…distant”, she leaned next to him, on her side, her glittering blue orbs looking at him with her hands in her pockets and the afternoon breeze waving her straight black, waist-long hair in a mesmerizing rhythm.

“Nothing, everything is okay. I was just thinking tomorrow everything will change and yet nothing will. I came to Hogwarts wanting to be nothing like my family, father, brother, and all, and to defeat Azrail I have to resort to stratagems and schemes just like my father did for his Imperium Arcana. So, am I any different, in the end? I don’t know.” He replied, still gazing out at the horizon.

“You are nothing like your family, and if as you say you are strategizing you are doing so not to commit suffering and death in the name of some imaginary superiority and right to rule but to defeat those who do.”

“Could I do it without becoming them? Can I? Because one day I will fight Azrail again…I already tried to kill him you know, in Elysion I pointed my wand at him and said the two words, do I not hate him enough? Is that it? Is it the unicorn hair core? For some reason my wand refused to cast the killing curse at him, and I am both revolted by the very notion I tried to do this and exhilarated at the idea he could have been dead now if it had worked…I just don’t know. I feel confused, I want him dead for what’s he done to me, to Charles to everyone else and at the same time…”, Felix let out a deep sigh.

Claudia passed a hand around his shoulders, trying to be there for him. “A very wise man once told me that the only way to defeat evil is not to become it, but to deny it battle. Grandpa was referring to something else that had happened, but it rings true here as well, I think”, she hugged him for a moment.

“How do I deny Azrail battle and defeat him?”

“I am not sure Azrail is the evil here, nor are you, but you can defeat Azrail without killing him”, she replied.

“I don’t know…”, Felix turned his eyes on her. “Tomorrow after the day’s exams, will you be in the Great Hall?”

“Uh…I can be, what’s the occasion?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m going to do something which you’ll probably think is stupid, but I feel needs to be done, will you be there, please?”

“Sure.”, Felix nodded and left, walking away slowly, hands in his pockets, head hanging low.

Emerick and Claudia entered the Great Hall, they saw Felix sitting on a stool in the center of the Hall, with people coming and going around him, someone was setting up a camera, another was applying makeup on a woman sitting on a stool opposite him. Her blond shoulder-length hair making her recognizable to those who watched the Daily Seer as Irina Jockovich, the station’s most ambitious, cutthroat reporter, with a few scoops in her belt.

Felix sat emotionless on the stool waiting as her crew were getting things ready.

“Come on people, are we ready? This is likely my most important interview to date, chop, chop”, Irina clasped her hands together twice.

“What’s going on here?” Claudia whispered in Emerick’s ear, pushing through those gathered around the perimeter set by the Daily Seer crew.

Felix spotted them in the crowd giving them a smile and a nod, before turning his attention back to the reporter.

“Okay, we’re ready. Live in five, four, three”, one of the crew stood behind the camera, counting down. In two and one he did so only with his fingers.

“This is “The hour with Irina”, and we are coming to you live from Hogwarts for a once in a lifetime interview with the heir of Cillian Gaunt, who recently changed his name, Felix Burton. Good afternoon, Felix”, she said smiling wide in the camera.

“Hello”, Felix sat on the stool, hands kneaded on his lap, body sitting straight, knees bent inwards under the stool.

“I think we can get started with some simple questions, to get our viewers familiarized with you. You are now in your fourth year in Hogwarts?”

“Yes.”

“You were raised in one of the richest wizarding families in Britain or anywhere else, how was that? A life of privilege?”

“A living, daily nightmare. My father was not one to dot or show affection, care, or love. Or give presents of any kind. If people think I am this spoiled brat who’s had everything given to him in a life of ease and plenty, they are dead wrong. Azrail and Ernaline tortured me day in and day out and Cillian allowed them so that I’d grow and become more powerful from adversity. I was a toddler and a child.”

“I think that’s a side of you, of the Gaunt family people are not very accustomed to. Did you have any friends before coming to Hogwarts? Other family?”

“No, I was never allowed to go outside the Manor or play with anyone. At first Cillian then Averill the House-Elf were responsible for teaching me things Cillian thought I had to know, even before coming to Hogwarts. When I first came to Hogwarts everyone were biased and afraid and tried their best to avoid me. Charles, Emerick and Claudia broke that by befriending me.”

“You are now a Hufflepuff, but originally you had been sorted into Slytherin?”

“Yes, that’s correct. My father had been controlling the Headmistress, Professor Adams, at the time by means of a cursed Old Gods item and he used her to bypass the Sorting Hat’s will and sort me into Slytherin, his house where he thought I belonged. In my third year I was re-sorted in Hufflepuff where the Sorting Hat had originally wanted to sort me into.”

“Fascinating. We have been trying to get an interview with you or your father or brother for some time now so, what changed your mind when all our efforts in the past had been rejected?”

“You wouldn’t like an interview with either my father or my brother and at first my father as my legal guardian rejected you interviewing me and then I did because I did not want the limelight.”

“What’s changed now?”

“Many things, but mostly with my father dead and I’ve been named as sole heir of the Gaunt family fortune I feel it was time to set some things right about me.”

“Oh god…he’s using the interview to indirectly speak to Azrail…”, Claudia whispered to Emerick.

“Y-you have? There has not been any announcement…”, Irina stuttered at the realization of what this meant and caught off guard by not knowing something in the research she must have done prior to the interview. McCormack had hidden things well.

“I just announced it. Azrail killed our father two years ago, but before he did so, Cillian named me as his sole heir in his will and testament. Things were delayed by the destruction of the Ministries, but as of yesterday…it is done.” Gasps reverberated across the Great Hall.

“Are you not afraid? Telling the world about it?” Irina conducted the interview with a professional smile, appearing relaxed and approachable.

“No, I don’t intent to keep any of it, all the property will be sold, and the earnings given out to the families of the victims of Cillian and Azrail’s war. I will only keep enough money for a house for me, and I mean a house, not a Manor. I don’t want any of it, dirty, bloody money.”

“One could say you’re not doing this out of charity but out of guilt, or to buy the victims’ families out.”

“Anyone can say anything they want; I can’t stop them having any opinion they want, correct or wrong ones. It is not out of charity, or because I want to buy out anyone or because of guilt, only because of a desire to not have anything to do with my family’s practices and methods used to acquire this wealth.”

“And if Azrail learns of this? If he sees this broadcast, live, or recorded? Are you not afraid he’ll come after you?”

“He can come after me and he can kill me, he won’t get any of it. I die, the families of the victims still get everything. But since you brought it up.”

“Oh…god…”, Emerick whispered, it was easy to guess what Felix would say next. He wanted to somehow stop his friend from doing so, but he knew he could not.

“Azrail, you have tortured me, you have attempted to murder me, and I still live. You no longer have access to the family money or, soon, property and resources. You stand alone. You murdered my best friend and cousin and for that if for no other reason one day I will kill you. You want me? You want the wealth I have just deprived you of? Come and get it”, Felix said with a death mask for a face, looking straight into the camera. “You wanted war, brother? You have it”, finishing he stood up and made to leave.

“How will you, a child, manage to defeat one of the darkest, most powerful wizards of all time? Creator of more than two hundred new spells meant to inflict pain or death?” Irina asked him, shocked.

“If my psychopath of a half-brother has his spies in this school as he so claims, he already knows the answer to that question”, Felix replied, leaving the Great Hall.

Claudia and Emerick knew it, this was going to be an interesting summer, for Felix had just declared war on Azrail, first with Professor Jordan saying in public he’d train him at dueling and now with the interview.

The school buzzed around Felix’s interview for the remainder of the exams and during the end-of-year feast before they departed Hogwarts for the summer.


End file.
